Today’s greatest directors have a lot of issues to resolve with Gen Z
Watch the trailer for ‘Eddington’, a film by Ari Aster
Credit: Universal Pictures/Disclosure
This article contains spoilers.
At a certain point in Eddingtonwestern Ari Aster In the anxiety-inducing, Covid-era, a white teenager named Brian stands on a bandstand during a memorial and says, “I’m just another privileged white kid, and my job is to sit and listen — which is what I plan to do after I give this speech that I have no right to give.” But even as the teenager declares that his role is to “sit and listen,” his voice rises, his tone becomes more aggressive. The irony, like much of the irony in Aster’s film, is comical until it becomes menacing.
Eddington shares a common concern with One Battle After Anotherof Paul Thomas Andersone After the Huntof Luca Guadagnino: How a younger generation behaves during the current political moment. These films resonated more in discourse than at the box office, but with each directed by a well-respected “auteur” director, they offer a collective look at how the Gen Z story is told on the big screen. The films take different approaches, but all reflect a general wariness toward Gen Z: young people who have grown up in the age of social media, using the rhetoric of protest and revolution. They perform their woke politics, often disconnected from the ideologies they so desperately want to defend.
Cameron Mann as Brian in a scene from ‘Eddington’ Photo: A24/Disclosure
Eddington follows small-town New Mexico Sheriff Joe Cross (played by Joaquin Phoenix) in May 2020 as his disdain for Covid mask mandates and personal feud with incumbent mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) spiral into a bizarre sequence of events that begin with his decision to run against Ted for mayor and end with a bloody street shootout.
Although Aster focuses our attention on Joe, the film also picks up on the constant background noise that surrounds him: news media, online conspiracy theories, social media feeds. And perhaps those most affected by all this noise are the young people in their community. A handful of teenagers take to the streets of Eddington to protest police brutality, much to Joe’s dismay. But the sight of the signs and bent knees of the mostly white protesters is juxtaposed with the empty, dusty streets of their city, showing how much of this mobilization is more about image and popularity than about enacting real change.
Aster’s film shows that even at their most ignorant and disingenuous, these young people are still products of an age of social media and misinformation. They are also able to manipulate the larger narrative to place themselves at the center, for their own benefit. One of the film’s secondary arcs revolves around Brian, whose sudden interest in political action is driven by his infatuation with a young political evangelist named Sarah. His embrace of Sarah’s rhetoric about whiteness and injustice is a contradictory mix of self-centered performance and obedient self-effacement.
The joke is not about the veracity of his statements, but about his inability to sincerely understand and practice the policy he is urging. In what is perhaps the film’s funniest line, Brian preaches about the imperiousness of whiteness at the dinner table to his parents, whose response is utter confusion. “You’re white,” his father reminds him, as if his son has forgotten. Brian is the laughing stock.
And yet, by the end of the film, Brian comes out on top as a successful conservative influencer. He repeated some woke talking points to gain social capital, shot a man dead on camera in an act of “heroism,” and reversed the ideologies that helped him make his name. If this is the kind of change Gen Z can make, he says Eddingtonso the best we can hope for in our modern America are empty victories — words of protest with nothing behind them, ideals disconnected from reality.
There is a similar cynicism in Guadagnino’s academic drama, After the Huntin which a Yale philosophy professor named Alma (Julia Roberts) is forced to confront allegations that her beloved colleague, friend, and sometimes lover assaulted her star student. The accused, a friendly assistant professor named Hank (Andrew Garfield), claims that Alma’s student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), is lying to get back at Hank for accusing her of plagiarizing her thesis. Hank also argues that this comes down to Maggie exploiting her class privilege; his parents are major donors to the university.
Ayo Edebiri and Julia Roberts in a scene from ‘After the Hunt’ Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/Amazon MGM Studios/Disclosure
Alma isn’t just torn between her loyalty to Maggie and Hank; she is also caught between two vastly different generational attitudes toward such a situation, pre- and post-#MeToo. Although Alma says she believes Maggie’s claim, she discourages her from sharing her story. Alma sees Maggie as emblematic of a younger generation eager to make their struggles public rather than simply silently accept them along with the privileges they possess.
Just like in Eddington, After the Hunt shows what it looks like when Gen Z announces a cause with activism that resembles reflexive groupthink and hive-style attacks. Maggie’s partner leads a group of protesters who surround Alma on campus, and when Maggie speaks to a journalist about her story, Hank’s behavior and Maggie’s complicity come to light, with negative consequences for both.
But while Aster looks at everyone, including the Gen Z protesters, with the same cynical satirical gaze, After the Hunt it doesn’t seem to have any specific point or judgment to make other than noting the differences between the generations. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Alma has her own secret history that she has buried — she once accused an older man, her father’s friend, of assault, although she now insists the act was consensual. But even his understanding of this incident reflects a more dated perspective that blames the victim, even when she is a teenager. Alma’s husband has to assure her that despite her willingness to get involved in that case at the time, as a teenager she was still the victim of statutory rape (statutory rapein American legislation).
Of the recent films to capture Gen Z’s penchant for sociopolitical action, One Battle After Another takes its young characters more seriously. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a former member of the far-left militant group French 75. Now he’s an isolated hermit, getting high at home in his bathrobe while watching The Battle of Algiers when he discovers that he and his teenage daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), are being tracked by a military officer with his own personal motives for finding the remaining members of the French 75.
Chase Infiniti in a scene from ‘One Battle After Another’ Photo: Warner Bros. ‘Pictures/Disclosure
While Eddington e After the Hunt place the younger generation sometimes comically, sometimes sinisterly, at odds with the older generation, One Battle After Another advocates the ways in which a political movement can bridge generations and thus preserve a tradition of work and revolution for social justice.
Although Bob was a firebrand member of the French 75 (literally — he was an explosives expert), today he is paranoid and somewhat out of touch with reality. And when it comes to Willa, he reverts to a stereotypical traditional father figure, grilling her about her love life and perplexingly questioning her non-binary friend’s pronouns. He is intentionally portrayed as a man lost in time, a revolutionary without his movement.
At the end of the film, as Bob frantically runs to find his daughter, with the military hot on their heels, it becomes clear that this is not a film just about Bob’s arc, from revolutionary left-wing white man to failed father dragged back into his past; it’s about how the fight continues despite and beyond Bob.
Willa becomes as seriously involved in her parents’ struggle as they were and displays a sense of fearlessness and resilience unmatched by the young people in the other films. At the end of the film, it is not Bob but Willa who goes out for a protest while the music American Girl play. Willa represents the future—and its promise as young people are inspired to take up the fight seriously.
This content was translated with the help of Artificial Intelligence tools and reviewed by our editorial team. Find out more in our AI Policy.
Hi! I’m Renato Lopes, an electric vehicle enthusiast and the creator of this blog dedicated to the future of clean, smart, and sustainable mobility. My mission is to share accurate information, honest reviews, and practical tips about electric cars—from new EV releases and battery innovations to charging solutions and green driving habits. Whether you’re an EV owner, a curious reader, or someone planning to make the switch, this space was made for you.
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