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PORTSIDE CULTURE

ARI ASTER’S ‘EDDINGTON’ TAKES THE TENSION OF THE PANDEMIC TO A
VIOLENT END  
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Phil Harrell
July 17, 2025
NPR
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_ The film is essentially broken into two halves: the rising tension
of the region's pandemic policies and the early Black Lives Matter
protests and the disinformation spread through the internet _

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in 'Eddington', Ari Aster and Darius
Khondji/A24

 

Films known as "period pieces" take viewers back to the Renaissance or
Victorian England, for example.

Are you ready for a period piece about the pandemic?

_Eddington_ takes its name from a fictional small town in New Mexico
in late May 2020. And like any good Western there's a stand-off. Pedro
Pascal plays the mayor who's trying to enforce masking and social
distancing, and Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff who thinks that should
all be a choice, not a mandate. Hysteria in town is high, and things
go south.

The film_ _is written and directed by someone who knows a little
something about building tension, Ari Aster
(_Midsommar_, _Hereditary_, _Beau Is Afraid_).

"That became the center of the culture wars in this country, where you
had people arguing for public health and safety, and then you had
people arguing for personal freedoms," Aster told _Morning
Edition_ host A Martínez. "It's about a bunch of people living in
different realities who are unreachable to each other… It pushes
them into deeper convictions and paranoia."

Aster experienced the COVID-era lockdowns from his home in New Mexico
and saw the fissure in his community's sympathy for each other widen
considerably in 2020. Still, he tried to write each character
in _Eddington_ with sympathy — in such a way that the viewer
couldn't determine Aster's own politics.

"A big part of the project for me was to pull back as far as I could
and include as many voices as I could that are a part of this
cacophony."

The film is essentially broken into two halves: the rising tension of
the region's pandemic policies and the early Black Lives Matter
protests and the disinformation spread through the internet — and
then midway through the film, the tension builds to what seems to be
inevitable: violence.

"I think that violence is basically the logical next step to a lot of
what has been happening," Aster said. "You fill people with rage and
hatred and you give them a very clear scapegoat, and there's one
logical endpoint."

Some critics have called the film a satire, and Aster agrees.

"But what it's most critical of is this landscape where we've all been
divided very successfully, and it's become almost impossible to
imagine reaching each other."

Aster hopes audiences find solidarity in watching _Eddington_ in a
theater next to people who might have been on opposite ends of the
pandemic's culture war five years ago.

"If there's anything hopeful about the film," he said, "it is a period
piece, so we can look at the way we _were_ and maybe have a chance
at seeing how we _are_. And there could be the question asked: Do we
want to stay on this path? And what is in our power to step off of it?
Because it seems to be heading straight towards a brick wall."

_The audio version of this story was produced by Lilly Quiroz._

* eddington
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* A24
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* Pandemic
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* Black Lives Matter
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* westerns
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