‘Eddington’ is a cynical simulacrum

If you know nothing of Ari Aster’s Eddington going in — or of the nature of his previous films, including Hereditary and Midsommar — the time stamp that appears on the screen within the first few minutes is likely to trigger anxiety anyhow: “May 2020.”

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal play, respectively, the sheriff and mayor of the small rural town of Eddington, New Mexico who face off politically and personally. Scenes in the film reverberate with the distressing echo of déjà vu: characters fall down COVID-19 conspiracy holes, an unmasked person is denied service in a grocery store as others clap in approval.

The news out of Minneapolis of George Floyd’s murder activates Eddington’s predominantly white community in the same way it did many real communities across the globe that year — the perfect alchemy of pent-up restlessness from extended isolation, genuine outrage at racial injustice and an abundance of free time. Aster gets something about that ephemeral period of collective “racial reckoning” right, as many characters take to the streets to protest police brutality and recite anti-racist talking points ad nauseum without contemplating a follow-up plan for concrete action. To put it bluntly, they are admirable yet insufferable, their postured passion only magnified by the director’s choice to focus on the hormonal and angsty teens of the bunch.

The problem with Eddington is that it exists as a cynical simulacrum. It wants to impress you by reproducing the chaos, disinformation, and combativeness of that specific moment — and it does capture that feeling well — but reproduction is about as deep as Aster is willing to get. This is especially exasperating in his deployment of Michael (Micheal Ward), the movie’s sole Black character.

Of course he’s a police officer. It’s just so laughably convenient, like a setup to a punchline. And that’s how it plays, with the mostly white social justice warriors yelling things like “The cops and the Klan go hand-in-hand!” as the only Black person who seems to exist in Eddington stands guard. One of those protesters, a younger sometime paramour of Michael’s, essentially shames him for betraying his race: “You’ve got to stand with us! … I know I haven’t experienced racism, but you have!”

Michael’s a police officer — I’m repeating this only because it’s the only personality Aster gives him. How does Floyd’s murder make him feel, as an officer, but more importantly, as a Black man? Couldn’t tell you! Does he have any family or non-work friends in this tiny town? Well, at one point he calls his uncle for help. (The uncle is off-screen, the conversation reveals nothing about their relationship.) And I guess we learn his late father was once himself a policeman. (Again, his whole personality is just, like, Black cop, but without any emotional grist.)

Plenty of things happen to Michael, because they must in order to propel Aster’s labyrinthine plot-heavy doomscroll of a movie. He and an indigenous officer (William Belleau), who arrives in the film’s third act, are merely symbolic vessels for shouldering “the discourse” on race, thin traces of characters. In effect, Michael’s isolated in both Eddington and Eddington. I won’t get into spoiler territory, but I will say that he’s delivered a predictably cruel fate (like most of the film’s characters, to be fair) which rings as intellectually true but artistically cheap.

I think often about that time Jordan Peele tweeted “Get Out is a documentary.” It’s a cheeky statement — probably made only in half-jest — that aptly reflects the filmmaker’s artistic intent for his 2017 feature debut. Peele understands there can be a fine line between documentation and creation, and that one value of the latter is the ability to draw upon familiar historical reference points and filter them through well-crafted heightened drama.

Eddington is the kind of movie that thinks it’s doing what Get Out does. But instead of making a Peele-esque “documentary,” it lands with a thud in the realm of uncanny historical reenactment.