COVID sucked for all of us. Whether you agreed with the mask [I want to say “mandate,” but it was really more of a suggestion at best] requests or not. That’s something I never understood about the vehement deniers. Do you guys really think anybody wants to wear a COVID mask? And, if not, why do you think we choose to wear them anyway? The pro-mask side has no Trump figure; we just believe in science.
The sheriff of Eddington, New Mexico, Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), refuses to wear a COVID mask. For Joe, it’s about personal freedom. Well, gosh, I’m sure it is. For those of us that wore them, it was about health, both mine and yours and that of people I never met. And there it is –the bald reasons we do the things we do. All I can say is don’t like rooting for Joaquin Phoenix, so I’m glad I didn’t have to.
The mayor of Eddington is Ted (Pedro Pascal). Ted is up for re-election and Joe decides to run against him on a pro-asshole campaign. This is when all Hell breaks loose with the plot. Joe’s reclusive wife Louise (Emma Stone) starts up a relationship with a cult leader (Austin Butler). Joe’s mom gets involved. Joe recruits his deputies to start campaigning. Then Ted’s son Eric joins BLM so he can hit on a girl. Joe lies about Ted sexually assaulting his wife.
This is before Joe takes the law into his own hands and also before a white supremacist terrorist group shows up in Eddington to create havoc.
Film, you lost me about three threads ago.
Not unlike COVID, Eddington was destined to disappoint. My disappointment happened earlier than 
most because I don’t enjoy Joaquin Phoenix even when he’s playing a good character. Watching him indulge in evil makes me wish I were watching Joker. And at some point, writer/director Ari Aster stopped making Eddington and started making Beau Is Afraid, Chapter II. Geez, Ari, I didn’t like the first one; why would I like this?
Eddington is a long film punctuated a moments I didn’t enjoy and concluded to my dissatisfaction with almost every story line. I have no idea what Ari Aster was going for here, but whatever it is, it didn’t work. I feel like Eddington is a tale much more suited to a miniseries or a “Twin Peaks” like treatment, where odd, jarring things are expected to happen and plot can be dissatisfying because “there’s always next week.” Whatever went on here, however, was both too long and too short at the same time.
There once was a sheriff named Joe
Who just loathed being told the word “no”
So he ran for the crown
Shutting opposition down
Because, “Damn it! I refuse to have to grow.”
Rated R, 158 Minutes
Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Genre: The unsatisfactory COVID files, Chapter 38
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Those good with unjustified conclusions
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Everybody else
