After sharing a fan club with Ari Aster’s first feature film, Beau Tem Medo, the filmmaker moved away from the horror stories that made him famous, if not entirely, and chose Westerns to tell new fables. Following a weaker-than-expected consensus, “Eddington” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and arrived in Brazil months after its U.S. release.
Described by critics as a “modern Western,” the film is an update on a genre hallowed by the conflicts of the Old West, stunning deserts, and duels between trigger experts and men on the verge of collapse.The film is set in the titular city, which has been overrun by a campaign between the naysayer sheriff Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and neoliberal mayor Ted Garcia, leading to the end of the world during the coronavirus pandemic. He played the role of Pedro Pascal.
There is no exaggeration in the labels attributed to production. By appropriating the rudimentary mythology of American cinema, Aster presents a world at odds with John Ford’s sequences and scenes dominated by Clint Eastwood’s gaze. By emptying out the symbols that once held so much meaning, the director directed an image-free film without a noose around his neck.
After all, this is a Western where bars are empty and people are indoors. Westerns starring a crazy sheriff — not a new character, but no longer wearing a mask, real or figurative — take a long time to show the violence.
When they happen, they happen over several stops and most of the time, away from the camera. The exception is the moment when the main character of Phoenix carries a machine gun. Shots print flashes of light on the screen, affecting the clarity with which the action is recorded. Of course, this is in addition to interfering with the actor’s threatening speeches.
First, the gap between the genre’s traditions, the symbolism behind the records, and the audience’s perception condemns the pandemic ritual. Aster recalls a recent time when two or more bodies didn’t occupy the same space — Pascal’s politician, for example, insisted on distancing and was ridiculed by a reactionary sheriff — and communication stalled.
Additionally, the filmmaker plays with the nature of images by bringing digital platforms into the desert. In this environment, between religious sects and political currents, there is a concentration of different narratives fabricated by those resisting the upheaval. In the process, activists waste their saliva justifying their demands and the public promises nothing. His tweet seems stronger than any protest.
These are conflicts hidden in invisible networks, and dialogue emerges in traces. What’s left is a flawed set of icons, with Aster playing with a genre that doesn’t fit the current era. The result is less a satire on the collapse of the nation than a satire on Hollywood, which has long since ceased to be politically active.
Therefore, he forces his characters into a world of emptiness. It is no coincidence that Eddington’s destiny is to illuminate the darkness of the desert with a large and promising data center. Funded by the Mayor, the project begins with an opening scene in which a drunk man wanders towards the city center, and as he leaves, viewers are left to observe the land where an artificial intelligence center will be built.
Aster uses the sobriety of a pandemic world, where the symptoms of COVID-19 are conflated with the solitude of a cell phone, to criticize an industry that has banned imagination. It’s gotten to the point where a drone flying over nothing is the closest thing we have to dreaming of planets outside of our own.
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