With Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, ‘Eddington’ shows the fragmentation of American democracy in the pandemic

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“Eddington”, the resulting film that arrives this Thursday, November 13th, in Brazilian cinemas, is not exactly a drama about the times of Covid, but it describes it as a definitive breaking point between two worlds.

— In the last 20 years, we have lived in the era of hyper-individualism. That community strength, which seemed to be central in democracies, has disappeared. Covid seems to have been the moment when that connection was finally severed — said the director in May, during the Cannes Festival, where “Eddington” won the world premiere. — I wrote this story in a state of fear and anxiety about the world. I wanted to make a film about what the United States represented to me and how I felt at that moment. I tried to distance myself from the facts and simply describe what it’s like to live in a world where no one can agree anymore on what’s real and what’s not.

Set in the fictional city in the state of New Mexico that gives the film its title, “Eddington” takes place during the first months of the pandemic, and uses the feuds between Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, from the series “The Last of Us”), the neoliberal mayor and owner of the local bar, and Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the conservative village sheriff, as a microcosm of the political, social and ideological fragmentation of the country at that time.

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Amid the confinement decree and the imposition of the use of masks, which are contested by the sheriff, the city is bombarded by echoes of the Black Lives Matter movement, conspiracy theories and fake news spread across the internet, and the threat of data theft by large technology companies.

The city’s population, already suspicious, scared and divided, will now also see their sheriff launch himself as a candidate for mayor, announced with gallantry on social media.

Two other characters add fuel to the fire of drama and vanity of the electoral dispute: Louise (Emma Stone), Joe’s wife, who had a romance with the current mayor in the past; and Dawn (Deidre O’Connell), the sheriff’s mother, staying at her son’s house, a fierce disseminator of conspiracy theories about the origins of the pandemic and false information.

The intricate plot constructed by Aster suggests that all these forces fueled the powder keg that the country became.

— People cling to their religious and political dogmas and close themselves inside bubbles. They feel very powerful in these bubbles, but also very scared. The film talks about what happens when people isolate themselves from each other, and start living in the realities they built for themselves — understands Aster, who was born in New York. — When these groups, these bubbles, come into conflict with each other, attack each other, a new logic begins to be created. From then on, people start to amplify their fears and paranoia, and this is extremely dangerous.

The 39-year-old director is a genre recycler. He used horror aesthetics to examine the dynamics of a dysfunctional family in “Hereditary” and the end of a romantic relationship in “Midsommar” (2019). “Beau is Afraid” (2023), his previous film, is a dark comedy with surrealist tones about a man tormented by the loss of his mother.

With “Eddington”, Auster finally managed to fulfill his old dream of working with Western elements because, according to him, “it is a genre that talks about the construction of the United States, and what I feel is that we are experiencing a collapse of something and the birth of something else, which is reflected in other recent governments in the world”.

There is even a kind of duel between Ted and Joe in the style of “Kill or be killed” (1952), by Fred Zinnemann, to crown the reference to the American western. The sequence is one of the critical points in the dispute over values ​​between Joe and Ted, who plans to bring a large enterprise to the city. The sheriff also despises the inhabitants of the nearby Eddington Indian reservation, who only fight to defend their territory and traditions.

At the same time, the current mayor allows the construction of a big tech data center in the city, without considering the social and environmental impacts of the project.

— I like how Ari talks about feeling disconnected from a truth and a feeling of collectivity — said Pascal, a Chilean naturalized American. — I am used to observing the culture of the United States from the outside, as a foreigner, and there are many ways to see political and sociological issues in this very complex culture. I think Ari functions as an informant, someone on the inside saying “this is what’s happening here!” The film talks about a world where there is no longer a common sense of truth, and I think that’s very brave of him.

Phoenix, who worked with Aster on “Beau Is Afraid,” said he felt “warm and affection for Joe, a character who desperately seeks validation and connection with others.”

The sheriff is not exactly a hero: he incriminates the only black police officer at the station in a murder, tries to contain a local manifesto linked to the Black Lives Matter movement and confronts a supposed anti-fascist terrorist attack with a machine gun.

But all of the characters in “Eddington”, in some way, carry some kind of moral or ethical ambiguity. The director states that he did not intend to privilege ideological or partisan sides: