For many fans of genre films, Ari Aster's name resonates like that of the film master who disturbs. Unequal Midsommar with stripper Hereditary through the brain thriller Beautiful is afraidThe prodigy director always knows how to raise the crescendo tension. If some waited, febrile, for the white smoke of the new tenant of the Vatican, on MaG we swore only by Eddington before you join the cruise. After three films rooted in horrific folklore, his new feature film moves away from the paths of fear: would Ari Aster have taken back his loyal followers with his vitriol portrait of a paranoid and divided America? Submitted as an official selection, Eddington We unraveled by taking us where no one expected him. Eddington is a black comedy (and chattering) on covid canvas, a pretext all found to better reveal the decomposition of the New World that no longer makes anyone dream.
The human comedy nobody expected
After Beau's character, Joachim Phoenix is once again the lead actor chosen by Ari Aster to act as Joe Cross, local sheriff land to land and MAGA who ignores. He is fiercely opposed to Ted Garcia, the seminant mayor of this little town without history lost to the depths of New Mexico. Joe, on the other hand, is a simple man, so frustrated at a time that lives behind a screen and celebrates only the permanent exploit. The action takes place in May 2020, at the beginning of the covid, at the very moment when the entire planet was suspended from the decisions of rulers divided in the face of the measures to be adopted to counter the pandemic.
Aster paints a portrait of a fractured America that no longer knows how to handle otherness. If the sheriff likes to use the term of « community », word suitcase so dear to Americans and concept foreign to Old Continent, it is that he sees his inhabitants divide. Joe opposes frontally the wearing of the mask, symbol par excellence of division. It considers these standards to be inept in the state of Albuquerque, still spared compared to other more populated areas. Playing his asthma to escape the wearing of the mask, Joe Cross, the first representative of the law as a sheriff, ironically finds himself ignoring the health guidelines desired by the very consensual Ted Garcia.
Ari Aster will first drown the spectator in a deluge of conspiracyist words of characters in need of attention no longer knowing who to believe or who to follow. From the charismatic mayor to the pathetic, friendly sheriff, everyone seeks to take the lead. Behind these small screens that have colonized our daily lives, we think we see preachers of competing sects. The question of belief has always irrigated the work of Aster, sects of Midsommar to small refugee communities in the forest Beautiful is afraid.
Covid is here the symptom of a society obsessed with fear of contagion. Each gauges the other and proceeds by mimicry. Despite the two meters of regulatory health distance, the duel is permanent. Everyone is defied, irretrievably slipping from living together to a broken society and increasingly « algorithm ». We are witnessing a world where networks simulate the sense of originality of citizens who are so similar. Navigating on social networks is for many today a swindle of hateful content to another, foreshadowing a techno-feudal world answering a question as trivial as stupid: « What community do I belong to? ». As the word implies « belonging », each one is no longer self-owner after bringing allegiance to a particular group, highlighted by the new modern black magic of an unpredictable algorithm. A few clicks in the anodized air are now enough to determine beings. « Post it before I think » leaves the sheriff to his two only assistants or, the obvious illustration of the slipping of a company that deliberately frees from any reflexive step.
Eddington It also gives to heart joy by openly apeting the spread of the conspiracy scourge, numerology and its farfetched theses that seek to give meaning to a confusing acceleration of history. There is first Joe Cross's mother-in-law and his depressive daughter who live on each other, then, these numerous sequences by interposed screens where « the true is a moment of falsehood ». At a time when triumphant capitalism continues to surprise by its prodigious capacity for deformation, from subversion of language to infiltration of beings, Eddington is a grotesque mirror figure of a « world really overturned ». Even the search for love, though well-present, seems to constitute a categorical impasse, in the image of this impossible relationship between the sheriff and his depressive wife. In the marital bed, they're actually not together anymore... but next door. Is the relationship only possible?
We are not going back!
Aster refuses to aim exclusively at Trumpists whose name is never spoken, but only suggested by a few brief shots on the thread of a smartphone. Contagion is a metaphor for identity withdrawal; the search for new beliefs, the symptom. The American director does not hesitate to detract from the follow-up work in progressive movements, whose militant ends often limit to ridicule, especially when a white bourgeois committed to the cause Black Lives Matters recuses the use of the term « anti-racist » not to be considered as one of the determinants of white supremacy...
In the face of such sterile circumvolutions of debunked minds, the political approach is a hesitant like on a post instagram inviting to join the struggle. Joe Cross would almost embody the idea of common sense before he was caught up in digital mechanics. As the events of Minneapolis and the death of George Floyd ignited America, the replicas were felt, even in the desert of New Mexico. The sheriff attends despite him the first demonstrations of Black Lives Matter. He must restore order in front of a few young white paumés and versatiles, cramped to their mobile phone, new avatar of the « I am a witness » Miller's Mad Max saga. You have to be there and that's all, like a machine that would turn empty and stop any turning back once the violence is released.
And it's probably on that point thatEddington is the most cynical. The film device is announced from the beginning of the game by the « Project » policy of the sheriff who would like to become mayor. Letymology of the word « Project » makes sense here: throw something forward, « a point is all » Would anyone be tempted to add. Joe Cross looks for slogans before even wearing a program, pimps his car to the American and travels the city, brandishing – in the midst of riot – the famous « selfie ring light », an indispensable accessory of any modern influencer. With his other hand, always in evidence on his hip holster, he remains ready to draw at any moment. The hollow slogan « Never go back », new iteration of the permanent movement so dear to postmodern political gesticulations on both sides of the Atlantic is here adapted to the exercise of the western.
With the unequivocal image of the film's poster, rivals are irretrievably drawn to their fall... until the end detonating in every sense of the word. An epilogue that sets fire to the powder keg and comes out of this conspiracy maelstrom that ended up tired, constituting a substantial part of nearly 2h30 of feature film nonetheless. In this new New World Everything is redundant and it is the law of the strongest who governs. With each problem, a solution would be to increase the calibre of the firearm. Aster doesn't hesitate to pull out the sulfate to pass his message that we have well integrated.
At the time of the shooting that began in March 2024, Ari Aster (who himself grew up in Albuquerque) had doubtless flaired the chaos that is coming: the new star of the popular shepherd is nothing but gregarious violence. The latter spread and contaminate those communities that Aster fantasized in Beautiful is Afrid before the flood of nighttime fire we know. Crucial, cynical and often funny, Eddington Far removed from horror to get closer to reality, two words that are now readily competing. Behind Eddington broods a constant tension, as if these ordinary people could at some point switch to another Amok, this access of rage in particular highlighted by Anselm Jappe and which, by the mere search for blind power, leads the author to Mass waller, without any other form of claim than the destruction of others to repair oneself.
Less bright than the fresco The sweat east presented at the 15th 2023 and dealing with related topics, the last product of the A24 distance from trip Midsommar like the initiatory journey of Beautiful is afraid, both sides of the same work. The only trait of union is paranoia. Eddington Asks the only question that is still valid today: plunged into a state of constant astonishment, how can we succeed in regaining control of a present at all speed? We were waiting for the white smoke, we would have had the black smoke of an extraordinary director who never fails to surprise his audience.
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