Ari Aster's Eddington

Each week, Drew creates a watchlist with film recommendations provided by you, the tnmn community.

Last week’s winner (mockumentaries): Borat, submitted by Phil M. Congratulations, Phil! You are one step closer to winning a super cool prize.

This week’s vote: dark comedies. The watchlists are posted to our website and Letterboxd account every week.

This week’s category: movies that are better on a rewatch. Reply to this email with your submission. We’ll feature it next week, and the community will vote for their favorites. Winners are automatically entered into an annual lottery for a mystery prize. More wins increase your odds of being selected in the lottery.¹

¹ If your submission doesn't comply with the category, I’m going to launch a multi-channel PR campaign to ruthlessly disparage pre-washed, pre-distressed denim. I’ll make outrageous claims about the health risks of pre-treated denim and your friends and family will buy into the claims. They’ll ask you to wear raw denim exclusively — that is, unwashed, untreated denim — if you wish to continue seeing them. Because health risks.

You’ll show up to a few get togethers wearing treated denim, but, afraid of the health risks, they’ll test your denim at the door. They’ll detect the chemicals present in pre-treated demin and boot you out. And so you’ll concede to their demands. Raw denim can’t be that bad. You’ll buy a pair of raw denim and they’ll ship to your house in a few weeks.

When they arrive, you’ll find the jeans more stiff than the cardboard box you unpacked them from. You’ll think about throwing them in the wash and drying them to soften them up. But the internet will deafeningly explain to you that washing new denim defeats the purpose of purchasing it raw. You’ll have to break them in the old-fashioned way to fully experience the joy of raw denim — by wearing them relentlessly until they shed their sandpaper-like feel and mold to your body type.

You’ll be so relieved when you come across an article where the former CEO of Levi’s says showering in your denim can help break a pair in faster, and so you don’t need to suffer through all that chafing.

You’ll stand in a cold shower for thirty minutes wearing raw denim jeans, as instructed. The jeans will relax, but only slightly. Not enough to make the shower worth it. So, ya know. Please follow the category.

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A spoiler-free description of the movie.

During May 2020 in Eddington, New Mexico, the local sheriff runs for office against the sitting mayor.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

→ Provocations.² The subject matter of Eddington is inherently provocative and you like it, you dirty dog.

→ On-the-nose satire. Subtle like bringing a whoopee cushion to a funeral service.

→ Too soon. When a director explores recent events with a more literal filmmaking language. Unlike, say, Bugonia, which is slightly abstracted from our reality.

² I once owned a cookbook entitled Tacos: Recipes and Provocations. An egregiously pretentious name for a cookbook centering around one of the world’s least pretentious foods.

I visited the Amazon listing to see if the book was still for sale. 4.7 stars. Over 900 reviews. Proof that I am not alone in this universe. I recall wishing that the book was more modestly titled after I purchased it. “Tacos” is sufficient. No need for “ : Recipes and Provocations”. The book includes a yummy corn tortilla recipe, great salsa making instructions (especially for the un-evolved among us who’ve never used dried peppers as an ingredient), and exquisite food photography.

Why am I so preoccupied with the name of the book? I’ve thought really hard about this and traced it back to my mother. This is obviously her fault. She was notorious among friends for naming her kids in a way that expressly avoided the crosshairs of childhood bullies. Names very much mattered to her because she surmised that the wrong name was effectively a kick me sign taped to a child’s back.

She could twist the most innocuous, common names into instruments of childhood torture. My father wanted to name my younger brother Chase. A perfectly common name. My mother insisted that twisted fucks in the schoolyard would take that as an instruction and literally chase him around at recess. Repeating “chase Levy, chase Levy, chase Levy!”

If I was a girl and I was called Lori, the no-good kids in my neighborhood would point and chant “Whore-y Lori” until I broke down and cried. Once they learned my sex, they almost named me Jared. But she was positively convinced that if my head shape resembled a jar in any way, peers laugh away as they called me “Jarhead Levy”. If I was called Ross, Bossy Rossy. The list goes on.

She did love the name Jared, though. So, they settled on Blake as a first name and Jared as a middle name. BJ for short. A name designed to elude the most creative high schoolers from poking fun at me. Ironclad initials that not even the brightest minds could — oh, shit.

I think I’m done here.

What I liked about it.

Imagine burying a time capsule today. Stuffing it with newspaper clippings and family photos. Handwritten letters about recent events. A few knick knacks resembling the technology of our time.

Now, think of what you might envision for the time capsule once you bury it. A long slumber. Perhaps awaiting a curious group of kids, multiple generations following your death, to see a discolored patch of grass covering it. Digging the capsule up and ooo-ing and ahh-ing at the contents as they unpack it.

“Look what they were wearing back then!”

“Wait, people argued about what?”

“This is how they got around back then?”

Now, imagine if your romantic daydream about the fate of your time capsule was suddenly interrupted. Because a few days later, your friend stumbled upon the burial site and made you review the contents with him.

Ari Aster’s Eddington, which is set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and premised around technology-driven polarization, feels a little bit like that. A time capsule someone dug up far too soon.

The film is divisive given its focus on COVID-19 and other recent political lightning rods. But, not for the reasons you might expect. Ari Aster’s modern western isn’t really interested in virtue signaling or, for that matter, making its politics that abundantly clear.

And Eddington is not an exploration on why the world is the way it is or how it got there. In Eddington, the world just is.

The most notable stance the film does take is about who wins when politics and technology thrive on spurring chaos and division.

This is precisely why Eddington is the most challenging film I’ve written about since starting tnmn. And seemingly, this is also much of what made the film so polarizing to audiences and critics alike.

Some believe that so flagrantly avoiding a clear stance, while confidently presuming where things end up, is the most polarizing choice Aster could make. And a genius form of meta commentary. Others have said it renders the film a toothless mess.

No matter the debate on the film’s ideological merits, I still found myself enveloped in Ari Aster’s particular brand of filmmaking (see Hereditary and Midsommar if you haven’t already).

The skills Aster built making horror pictures are on full display in Eddington, his second departure from the genre following Beau Is Afraid.

The way he swings the camera around his subjects to make their surroundings more legible. His unabashed use of pitch-black darkness in the film — which makes for some truly breathtaking compositions for a Western setting. A twitchy, hair-raising score often led by a plucky guitar.

Perhaps most notably transplanted from his horror roots is the patience with which the script unfolds and his willingness to take it to some genuinely unexpected places.

I also quite admired the script’s tongue-in-cheek moments — moments of levity like the recurring young white teenager who (comically) struggles between his birth-given privilege and being an ally.

Worth mentioning: the loaded cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Deirdre O'Connell, among others) is expectedly capable of handling the material.

I pride myself on my ability to go into films completely unaware of the public discourse surrounding them. But it was sort of impossible to avoid with Eddington. I almost didn’t see it at all because of the discourse.

Drew convinced me to watch it, and I’m glad we did because I prefer to decide for myself. For all the fair accusations hurled for its unclear politics, it was a well-made, tense film with a compelling story to tell. And as I often tell my son: “Nothing’s perfect.”

Truth be told, I suspect Eddington may have garnered more admiration if it were released 30 years later. When these events feel more distant and (I hope) the troubles of our day have long been solved. When they resemble a few chapters in the history books before the world got its act together.

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat.”

→ The film is loosely based on a real feud. Ari Aster: “Joaquin's character is based on the sheriff of a vast county with a small population. He had a very passionate, long-standing feud with the mayor. [The mayor] ran on a platform of, "I'm going to make it so that if you come to town hall, you have to have to have a gun. And he won!"

One great line of dialogue from the film.

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