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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

Ari Aster quickly becomes one of the more interesting film-makers out there. And this is sad, because his 2 latest movies were commercial disappointments, while being excellent pieces of film-making. I already reviewed his anxiety epic Beau Is Afraid, which was a flop, while being a stellar piece of mastery over tension. And with Eddington ( which also flopped ) I'm starting to think that Aster has a marketing problem.

While his first two films were undoubtedly horror films, which are easy to market, his last two films were way harder to sell. Beau Is Afraid is not really a horror film, while it is kind of a horror film, and kind of a comedy, and then kind of a surrealistic drama. Yet I believe Beau Is Afraid is way easier to sell. You just focus on the main cinematic concept, which is the attempt at showing how it feels to have chronic anxiety. Similarly to how Memento shows how it feels to have short-term memory loss.

With Eddington it's not that simple. The trailers showed a movie about US politics in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic. Who the hell will want to watch that? While the movie gets actually interesting toward the end.

I understand why Aster and A24 decided to market it as they did. They wanted to sell you on the stuff that happens in the beginning, so you will not really expect the stuff that goes on in the end. Kind of like you would do with Takashi Miike's Audition. But Takashi Miike's Audition has a cool premise on it's own, before it devolves into madness.

Here, on the other hand, you get a painful political drama in the beginning, which everybody wants to know nothing about already. People are avoiding the trauma that was COVID and the trauma that is US politics ( especially during COVID ), yet Aster's ballsy balls go on an try to make a movie about all those things, from masks, to AI, to Antifa, to everything in between.

And the marketing department can only show these aspects of the movie in the marketing material, because everything that happens in the second half of the film is a major spoiler.

I guess this is a kind of movie that would actually benefit from a spoiler filled trailer. There is some amazing plotting in the second half of it, causing a hell of a lot of tension. And while they put some of it ( without much context ) in the trailers. Maybe having a little bit of a context, just maybe a little bit, could have intrigued people enough to know what is going on. Because frankly there is enough to the second half, that you could take a little bit of it and show it in the trailer without ruining the rest.

What about the actual politics in the movie? Well it seems like Ari Aster in not on anyone's side here. He shows good and bad aspects of both the left and the right. He both criticizes and agrees with both political sides. And in a way he is more interested in the mechanics of the politics, rather then in the messaging. Like, we see various ways various people push a narrative in a certain way, while they might or might not believe said narrative to gain certain things.

Joaquin Phoenix is our main character. He is a right wing, person with asthma, who decided to run for a mayor's office just because he doesn't want to wear the masks. Joaquin Phoenix is Joaquin Phoenix so obviously his performance is top notch. Going more into details will spoil the movie, I suppose.

Pedro Pascal plays the current mayor who seems to not like the masks or anything to do with the pandemic, privately, while needing to embrace all of it publicly because he is a politician.

Emma Stone plays a traumatized, anxious person who had questionable youth. We get glimpses at what might have happened to her, but nothing is clear. And in the end of the day it seems that all those theories about her were just manipulations of a cult leader played by Austin Butler.

Now this begs the question: Without going into spoilers, what did Ari Aster mean by the Austin Butler's character? Does Aster agree with him on some level, or does he think that he is just bullshiting everybody with scary stories to gain control over them, like cult leaders do? Because it seems that later in the film, inspired by Butler's character, Phoenix's character starts using the same manipulation techniques. The question is, for Aster, are those just manipulation techniques? Because those kinds of techniques are used now-a-days in all kinds of places to justify all kinds of bullshit. And if the movie is about everything that happens in the politics, maybe it is also a movie about things like privacy and "think of children" bullshit, that politicians use to gain access to the naked photos you send to people. I wonder what was the thinking there...

If you have some tolerance to political stuff and want to see a smartly written movie ( with a kick ass second half ), I would actually recommend you Eddington.

Happy Hacking!!!

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