Eddington

There are certain moments in film history when we get a unique film experience of a specific film, no matter what category we are talking about. For example i remember back in the 80´s i experienced my very first film from legendary director David Lynch and that was the body horror film Rabid. It was the year 1989 and it was the very first moment i got to watch David Lynch film Rabid on VHS. I borrowed the film from our neighbor family The Ostwalds ( they always got VHS films to their home since they knew one of the video rental store owner´s in our hometown ). Rabid turned out to be a very unique film esperience that basically tells the story of a young woman named Rose Miller ( played by actress Marilyn Chambers ) who crashes in a terrible motorcycle accident. She survives but is forced to go through surgery. What she doesn´t know is that this surgery have mutated her, feeding on other humans blood. A well made body horror film worth checking out. It was in the early 90´s i also got to experience another David Cronenberg classic known as Videorome. This was not my first movie to see actor James Wood, i had actually seen him in Oliver Stone´s drama thriller Salvador before i watched Videorome. It is a completely different film experience from Rabid but very well made and a fascinating. I especially love the fact that director David Cronenberg tried to explore media, how insane television can be having no limits between reality and fantasy.  Excellent performance by James Woods and i highly recommend the Arrow blu ray release of Videorome. Speaking of unique films perhaps you have heard of director Ari Aster? He really got a lot of respect for his 2018 horror film Hereditary ( a film i still really enjoy today )  and the film´s cast won a lot of awards at the 2019 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. His next film Midsommar also turneed out to be really good, showing a completely different view into Swedish traditional summer festival Midsommar celebration. I did not see his next film Beau Is Afraid, perhaps because i heard many people had very mixed opinions about this film. I did decide to check out Ari Aster´s latest film  called Eddington, a film i was planning to see in cinema but that plan failed. So i picked up a physical blu ray instead to review this film. Is this another high quality film from director Ari Aster or is Eddington his worst film as a director so far?

In the small town of Eddington people are going through the pandemic of the year 2020. Sheriff Joe Cross ( Joaquin Phoenix ) does not like wearing masks and he does not like all the rules that people are supposed to follow during the pandemic. He is not a fan of running mayor Ted Garcia ( Pedro Pascal ) so he decides to run for mayor as well. At first that might seem like a good idea, until things takes a very different turn.

I think we should clarify that Eddington is not a horror film, so if you are expecting anything similar to Hereditary or Midsommar then you will be disappointed. If you do want to see director Ari Aster do a completely different film then you have definetely entered the right place. This is basically a film that tries to capture how people experienced the pandemic during 2020. You might think to yourself;- Why make a movie about this that happened just 5 years ago? I could buy that argument if we are thinking that this could have been made into a film let´s say 10 years later, so we could get a different perspective. Either way, the film is here anyway so we might as well talk about it. I will begin saying i do think it was a good idea telling a story during the pandemic from a very small town out in the middle of nowhere. This would be a great location if you wanted to avoid meeting lots of people, especially if you don´t want to get infected by Covid 19. The most interesting part of this film is actually the mayor campaign going on in the city of Eddington. You have the local sheriff Joe Cross ( played well by actor Joaquin Phoenix ) and Ted Garcia ( another great performance from actor Pedro Pascal ), running against each other who clearly have different opinions regarding Covid 19 lockdown. To see these men argue against each other and run their own mayor campaigns, is actually quite charming in certain scenes. I also like to see the private life of sheriff Joe where he seems to have issues with his wife and her mother, as they argue over Joe´s choice to run for mayor. This film actually manage to capture the mentality of a smaller town, where you feel that people don´t really like big changes. I will say that Eddington is nowhere near as good as either Hereditary or Midsommar, this is basically a very generic film if you compare to director Ari Aster´s previous films. The length of this film is a problem landing at over 140 minutes long, and for a story that´s very simple you feel that they stretched this out a little bit too long. Otherwise i can still recommend Eddington is you want to see director Ari Aster doing a completely different film than we have seen him work on before. It´s a good looking film and i do feel it gives a realistic view into the world of politics. It may never find a big audience, but if you enjoy more independent driven stories then Eddington could possibly find it´s way to your heart.

Rating: DDD