Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025)

[therewillbeblus]

A24 announced 4K and Blu-ray releases today, with an October release date. They’re claiming that the 4K release is “A24 exclusive,” though I’d be surprised if they don’t turn up at specialty retailers too based upon their track record. Blu-ray will be everywhere.

And still no Beau is Afraid 4K, which somehow did better at the box office than this!

[mfunk9786]

You presumably mean A24 not Arrow, right?

I really need to get out of the house, Dom. Fixed.

[mfunk9786]

A24 announced 4K and Blu-ray releases today, with an October release date. They’re claiming that the 4K release is “A24 exclusive,” though I’d be surprised if they don’t turn up at specialty retailers too based upon their track record. Blu-ray will be everywhere.

And still no Beau is Afraid 4K, which somehow did better at the box office than this!

The import (I think it’s German but would have to check) looks and plays pretty great.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I have the Eagle, and it is indeed great, but there should still be a stateside edition. Especially something with English subs

[tehthomas]

Watched a late matinee at the Tara on Sunday.
Still processing, but my initial one-sentence reaction would be: Beau's Afraid 2: Pandemic Boogaloo

I did listen to an excellent podcast yesterday on the Lever, Ari Aster Thinks You’re Being Manipulated, with Ari Aster in a great conversaton with David Sirota (Don't Look Up).

[The Curious Sofa]

I hope the that this flopping gets Aster back to making horror movies. While I gave him the benefit of the doubt with Beau is Afraid, a film that starts out strong and then literally gets lost in the woods, nothing much about Eddington worked for me, be it as a western, a thriller or a satire. I believe we could do with a movie that recons with the pandemic and its politics, but apart from

Spoiler

that Pedro Pascal takes the Marion Crane way out,

there weren't many surprises.

Spoiler

Then that dynamic prematurely comes to a close and you're stuck with Phoenix's Joe Cross for the rest of the film, and he isn't a very interesting character. The Emma Stone/Austin Butler plotline feels underdeveloped.

[rapta]

Overall, a messy one, but slightly more enjoyable (?) than Beau is Afraid for me. At least the casting felt spot on, and there was plenty for these actors to do, but there's way too much going on here and Aster clearly doesn't know when to rein it in. It's like he's writing sketches in a room on his own, and definitely needs someone there to curb some of his ideas, omit some completely, and flesh others out. He's a solid technical director, but an indulgent one when it comes to impulses - you can see his mind ticking, and budget permitting he's just going to keep on going until it's overwhelming for both the audience and presumably himself too.

I agree that he should return to the horror genre at some point, but I am aware he probably didn't want to be pigeonholed as 'the A24 elevated horror guy', despite his debut remaining his strongest offering so far (though I did notice Midsommar had more of a cultural impact, particularly amongst younger viewers). I also wonder if Eddington is just part two in a 'sad impotent white man' trilogy, as Phoenix seems pretty intent on continuing to work with him (I suppose that's a more fruitful endeavour than further Joker films at this point in his career). My main disappointment is his insistence on being cynical, scathing, and unremittingly dark at all costs, as if he wants to be the provocateur of our times (except we already have Cronenberg, Von Trier, Haneke etc), but forgetting less is more when it comes to this stuff.

[therewillbeblus]

Watched this a third time, and I think it lives on a similar plane as Assassination Nation, where the sheer intensity from external forces leave the characters and narrative itself powerless to overcome, and it devolves into a messiness that reflects our current times' sensations of overwhelm. It's not entirely successful as a straightforward narrative film, a western, a noir, a satire, or an action-horror.. but it does succeed at refracting all of these elements into an orb of doom and gloom. Life right now is kinda funny, sorta distractible, and pretty damn horrifying and ungraspable - it's comprised of exhausting half-measures and dizzying sets of problems to attend to with limited vitality, and Aster's film's strange energy and loose threads meditate on that feeling. Beau is Afraid worked as an entirely subjective dive into neuroses channelling low self-esteem and core beliefs of incapability, and I don't know if this film is much different - other than upending that sense of subjectivity enough times, and diverting it towards a variety of other ideas and perspectives, to shatter its value. Aster did this well by keeping to his subjective stance in his previous film, showcasing Beau as both a sympathetic and pathetic character all under a ceiling of an egocentric fantasy-world, but here he turns away from Joe because the world is bigger than him. Whatever this film was supposed to be before it was updated to our current times is lost in the saturation of chaos we're experiencing right now culturally and personally. The directionless strands seem appropriate.

I don't know if this film is a 'masterpiece' or not under any objective terms. It has its share of problems and I'm still bemused by some of its pacing, narrative choices, and inclusions of irregularly-fueled sociopolitical commentary... But it feels like a masterpiece as a presentation of America's climate, much like Assassination Nation took the isolating and formidable nature of micro-level socialized cancel culture and carried it until the experience exploded, transforming into cultural pandemonium that similarly submerged individuals' narratives and ideas. We are essentially operating like Joe being invaded by Vernon and his absurd life story in a pivotal scene, and the film wisely doesn't know how to feel about that. We should pay attention and care, but can also react with laughter and disbelief and horror at what's being forced upon and taken from us by intrusive forces. Perhaps not knowing how to feel about this film is its greatest accomplishment, accidentally or intentionally.. but does it matter?

[Mr Sausage]

David Foster Wallace has this good line contra Brett Easton Ellis and American Psycho: “If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world.” And what you’re describing veers into that territory, where the film is disorganized, confused, undigested and undigestible, because, well, so’s the world. Suddenly things that normally distinguish a bad movie become an ingenious mimesis. And I can appreciate your ambivalence, that you don’t know if said mimesis is satisfying or if that even matters. I just wonder what the point is of making a confused morass about a confused morass for people who already feel the world is a confused morass. Can you even engage with that?

I’m not arguing with you by any means. I guess I just feel that, if you’re right, it’s less appropriate than sad. Like the best Aster could do is simply reproduce his own times—as if those times aren’t alive and well and can’t simply attest to themselves.

[therewillbeblus]

I guess I find the purpose in feeling affirmed and seen and relating to the world from a different contextual point. Like Antonioni, who is reflecting Sick Eros that people were/are experiencing culturally in western civilization but expressing it through art in a manner that ascends analysis in some respects. I can't really describe the feeling Antonioni gives me, but I compulsively watch his films because they validate a pervasive set of feelings I have, and Eddington succeeds in a similar vein. Sure, it sets up a bunch of things that in a normal movie would follow their way to satisfying conclusions, whereas Antonioni is more upfront about his tactic of forfeiting plot for tone. But then it becomes about the feeling itself, just the same. So Aster's movie can be accused of misleading its audience, but the cumulative effect is still that powerful feeling.

As an aside, I've always thought L'Avventura's model was especially effective because it too starts out as a more conventional narrative with mystery and character development all to eventually disintegrate into the abstract emotional undercurrent along with the disintegration of Anna's worth, which is incredibly tragic on an existential level. The movie, despite being an all-time favorite of mine, always frustrates me just a little in its the last third, but I see it as a strength - with the final moment serving as an exclamation point on that disintegration of narrative and emotional strands that have not, and can not, find a comfortable home. It feels absurd to compare this movie to Antonioni at all, and yet the effects are similarly reflective of intangible emotional experiences

[mfunk9786]

This film is meticulously constructed despite the chaos it depicts. I've found my second and third viewings to reveal plot intricacies and little details that I didn't notice the previous time around, and with the Ellis comparison out there, Aster instead has empathy for the intentions of every character onscreen. If anything, it works as a microcosm of how information in this connected age is processed from rumor to fact all the way back around to misinformation like it's being factory processed (and by the end, this is quite literally depicted). I don't know if this means I am taking either one of your sides, but Aster's construction here feels much, much more like Wallace's than Ellis'.

I can also completely understand watching it once and being done with it. But it's really much more thought through and self-referential and dense than I'd given it credit for the first time around.

[Mr Sausage]

I don’t know how to be affirmed or seen by this film because I can’t decide how Aster feels about what he’s showing me. What is being affirmed here? I could be persuaded that Aster has made a filmic version of the Menippean satire, except I couldn’t tell you what ideas and mental attitudes the film is stress testing.

The trouble with merely reproducing our current confusions is that I have no more idea what to do with the movie than I do the world at large. I think what I’m reminded of is another Joaquin Phoenix movie, The Master, which similarly had plenty of interesting parts, but whose relation to history, ideas, and even its own characters was obscure, so I found myself bouncing off it. It was stuffed so full of ambiguities, but offered so little guidance, that I came away unsure it meant anything. You could also say that the world is like that, but that’s the kind of unhelpful generalization you make when you’re not sure just what to say. Eddington’s like that, only instead of endless ambiguous signifiers it just has a lot of contradictory ones that cancel each other out.

Antonioni’s never done anything for me, but his view of the world is at least coherent. I can’t even be sure Eddington has a view of the world.

[Mr Sausage]

This film is meticulously constructed despite the chaos it depicts. I've found my second and third viewings to reveal plot intricacies and little details that I didn't notice the previous time around, and with the Ellis comparison out there, Aster instead has empathy for the intentions of every character onscreen. If anything, it works as a microcosm of how information in this connected age is processed from rumor to fact all the way back around to misinformation like it's being factory processed (and by the end, this is quite literally depicted). I don't know if this means I am taking either one of your sides, but Aster's construction here feels much, much more like Wallace's than Ellis'.

I can also completely understand watching it once and being done with it. But it's really much more thought through and self-referential and dense than I'd given it credit for the first time around.

I’m not actually comparing the movie to Brett Easton Ellis. They don’t have anything in common that I can see.

I’m not a fan of Ellis or Wallace. I just like how Wallace phrases that one thing.

[therewillbeblus]

There are two moments in the film where I feel like Aster perfectly captures the mood he's trying to set: I've already talked about the first one being the hilarious-tragic bit of Joe reacting to Vernon's horrific trauma, but the second comes at the start of the climax

Spoiler

after the explosion, when Joe wakes from the blast shock holding out his hand like a gun. He's probably holding it out thinking he has a gun, but the fact that his hand is shaped like a gun - the way a child might play - speaks volumes to the impotence he and we feel in this moment. Both in the context of what chaos is literally happening and the metaphorical chaos it signifies for the audience. It's absolutely hysterical and also one of the saddest things in the movie.

[Mr Sausage]

Those scenes also get at what mfunk was talking about: that it has become impossible to tell what’s real.

I guess if there is one overriding idea in the movie, it’s the problem of authenticity.

[mfunk9786]

I couldn’t tell you what ideas and mental attitudes the film is stress testing.

I'll take an amateurish stab at this:

One standout theme of Eddington for me is the notion that painful personal histories like the one Stone's character has, and unfathomably terrible world events like the George Floyd murder... instead of being treated as things that happen to real people in rather mundane and heartbreaking ways, are now mega-processed through the lens of thousands of people's chronic main character syndrome, to the point that they are unrecognizable slop when they come out of the other end of the tube needing to be reckoned with. (Traumatic histories and events always do come out of the other end of the tube needing to be reckoned with.)

Conspiratorial thinking dominates all cultural discourse, because people can't imagine themselves not being part of some larger fabric that explains why bad things can happen to good people. Add the reality of thousands of people suddenly dying from a disease with a still disputed origin, and people being divorced from the capability of speaking to one another while looking themselves in the eyes and mouths and brains start to break and melt in ways we never considered before.

It is far too easy to form networks and inaccurate threads between personal and global events in one's own mind, something that was a surefire marker of mental illness in the pre-internet age and is now just commonplace human behavior. "Why is terrible thing X happening to me? Well, I must have been an unwitting part of thing Y that I saw online." - then people network and pump up each other's delusions to the point of perhaps... creating mental illness where there wasn't any before? Developing an addiction to being the main character of your own life? An addiction to deluding yourself into thinking everything is someone else's fault? We have less and less control over our lives as we get more and more dubious information about them at our fingertips. The homeless man the film opens on seems to be about as accurate as representation of an endpoint of this cultural trend as Aster could conceive of, and says a lot about what he is trying to get across. But I'll admit to liking films that challenge me to be okay with not knowing the answer to what the filmmaker intends, and like films even more when it's evident that maybe the filmmaker themselves isn't even completely certain of it.

[Mr Sausage]

Very well said. But I’m curious about how you’ve identified that as the main thread. You’ve watched the movie more than I have, so no doubt you have a better grasp of it, but I remember the above being one of a host of interlocking ideas the film addresses, without any real signpost to tell you which of the multiple threads deserves pride of place. If anything the film seemed in danger of reproducing what it was satirizing, an overload or information of dubious authenticity that makes understanding impossible. But because the film is, as you say, meticulously organized, it cannot actually be representing a chaotic, incoherent world.

[mfunk9786]

The film opens with a man rambling nonsense (most of which is about how the world is attacking his brain, if I recall correctly), walking the distance from the site of the new data center into town. The film ends with an image of the data center glowing bright and playing its part in thrusting misinformation and nonsense in the direction of said town. I just think Aster is presenting an ouroboros of falsehoods and whisper-down-the-lane misinformation being fed and re-fed by its own excrement, then in-between that prologue and epilogue giving us an intimate, small town example of how that uniquely modern problem might present itself in modern day-to-day life. Which is, unfortunately, now more confusing and chaotic than it has any right to be and certainly moreso than it's ever been before.

Again, though, I can absolutely see how that kind of worldview isn't everybody's idea of a good (or coherent!) time.

[Mr Sausage]

Also, mfunk, your comments reminded me of this substack post:

I blame the internet. Back in the days before it, we had to learn to live with those around us, now you can just go out and find someone as equally stupid as yourself.

I call it the toaster fucker problem. Man wakes up in 1980, tells his friends "I want to fuck a toaster" Friends quite rightly berate and laugh at him, guy deals with it, maybe gets some therapy and goes on a bit better adjusted.

Guy in 2021 tells his friends that he wants to fuck a toaster, gets laughed at, immediately jumps on facebook and finds "Toaster Fucker Support group" where he reads that he's actually oppressed and he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster fuckers.

Apply this analogy to literally any insular bubble, it applies as equally to /r/thedonald as it does to the emaciated Che Guevara larpers that cry thinking about ringing their favourite pizza place.

Anyway, I too like plenty of messy, confounding, difficult art: books like The Obscene Bird of Night and The Affirmation, or movies like On the Silver Globe and Aster’s own Beau is Afraid. I just wasn’t especially compelled by Eddington’s version of that. Maybe because a lot of its incomprehensibilities felt predictable.

[mfunk9786]

Ha, I was going to give a really similar example about how easy it is to network around sexual deviancies, but I decided against it because it started with "In 1985, if you were someone who was really into child pornography," and that didn't seem like something I wanted in my portfolio. But of course, just like the example given above, there's already someone out there who's made the point in an even better fashion than I could have. I should reach out and network with him!

[therewillbeblus]

We have less and less control over our lives as we get more and more dubious information about them at our fingertips. The homeless man the film opens on seems to be about as accurate as representation of an endpoint of this cultural trend as Aster could conceive of, and says a lot about what he is trying to get across.

I was also thinking a lot about the bookend characters of the film this time around - Clifton Collins Jr. is a fitting opener for the film's chaotic energy, but what about its conclusion?

Spoiler

It would be appropriately morbid to end with Joe in a vegetative state, but instead we get Michael still shooting at targets. Is he trying to take control over his life with a simple, meditative practice? Still trying to beat Joe's record? Or has he, too, descended into madness, planning to assassinate Joe? I think the ambiguity works there - Can we be saved? (which looks like satisfaction 'letting go' and having the footage of Joe paralyzed as 'enough' to move on) Or are we doomed to perseverate and move inward towards psychosis and explode into violence?

Edit: I see mfunk responded with the data center illustration, which is definitely important. I'm just wondering about the characters themselves and what they represent. And is the first character actually deceptively simple? Isn't he indicative of a complex and layered person, or idea or situation, that we simply cannot and are not willing to or interested in accessing? And then to end on a data center which we gladly hand over rights to access everything about us, but which we equally don't understand, and don't particularly care to..? Now that's interesting - to willingly engage with an unfathomable thing with greater ease than an unfathomable person. Of course, Joe is the one harping on and on about treating people decently, as human beings, and he's the one to most egregiously, uh, not do that to the figure in question

[Mr Sausage]

Isn't he indicative of a complex and layered person, or idea or situation, that we simply cannot and are not willing to or interested in accessing?

Obviously I can't say for sure, but one troubling thing he represents is infection from without. He is an outcast or marginal figure that brings literal contagion to a closed system. Which rather oddly gestures at reactionary ideas--so is the film satirizing them? Certainly the closed system is far from free of its own problems. But there are a lot of intrusions from without in this movie. So the film both affirms small town ideology (we're safe from the chaos of the larger world if we remain isolated) and satirizes it (we're consumed by all the same problems as the wider world but don't want to admit it).

[mfunk9786]

Isn't he indicative of a complex and layered person, or idea or situation, that we simply cannot and are not willing to or interested in accessing?

Obviously I can't say for sure, but one troubling thing he represents is infection from without. He is an outcast or marginal figure that brings literal contagion to a closed system. Which rather oddly gestures at reactionary ideas--so is the film satirizing them? Certainly the closed system is far from free of its own problems. But there are a lot of intrusions from without in this movie. So the film both affirms small town ideology (we're safe from the chaos of the larger world if we remain isolated) and satirizes it (we're consumed by all the same problems as the wider world but don't want to admit it).

You may disagree, but I think this is a tremendous argument for why the film is great

[Mr Sausage]

Isn't he indicative of a complex and layered person, or idea or situation, that we simply cannot and are not willing to or interested in accessing?

Obviously I can't say for sure, but one troubling thing he represents is infection from without. He is an outcast or marginal figure that brings literal contagion to a closed system. Which rather oddly gestures at reactionary ideas--so is the film satirizing them? Certainly the closed system is far from free of its own problems. But there are a lot of intrusions from without in this movie. So the film both affirms small town ideology (we're safe from the chaos of the larger world if we remain isolated) and satirizes it (we're consumed by all the same problems as the wider world but don't want to admit it).

You may disagree, but I think this is a tremendous argument for why the film is great

If so, its nearest kin is Dragged Across Concrete, which spent its similar run time both endorsing and satirizing an endless set of contrasting viewpoints on all our current social issues. Tho' it was being more deliberately button pushing and confrontational than Eddington. It's also a film I don't exactly know what to do with.

[therewillbeblus]

And I think that's a candidate for the worst movie I've seen this decade, so I don't know what that says about my stance towards this reading! I certainly would never have thought to compare the two