Sydney Film Festival 2025 - Eddington

 

“Vote Joe Cross”


Incendiary, conspiratorial and satirical, Eddington is a scathing social horror from the master of cinematic paranoia Ari Aster that revels in the absurdity of recent COVID culture in a polarising probe into power and personality that escalates into disturbing absurdity where the horror comes from how close the chaos is to our current reality. 


Discussion Points:

In such a divided culture, Aster’s latest paranoid punch is sure to be polarising and do nothing to bridge partisan chasms. Known for his oddly grounded yet always surreal films, Aster is the master of anxiety and when his films hit their third act - it’s always chaos in the most unexpected ways. It’s certainly bold for Aster to make a film so shortly after the pandemic but his penchant for absurdity lends itself to a truly bizarre time in recent history, and I’m sure many will feel the film is a tad too soon to be objective. But despite its potential prematurity, Eddington still manages to very astutely capture the shifting tensions and conspiratorial culture that has only become magnified since. Joaquin Phoenix is expectedly unhinged as a small town sheriff in New Mexico who comes into conflict with the towns major played by Pedro Pascal over mask mandates and lockdown laws. This tension is only exacerbated by the genesis of the BLM movement, rogue Antifa attacks and deranged deputies leading to an absurdist closing that’s sadly not all too far removed from reality. A truly startling time capsule of our recent era, with a fantastic ensemble featuring small but memorable roles from Austin Butler and Emma Stone, and a screenplay that’s startling in its ability to capture the genuine social horror we all experienced in 2020 and its continuing cultural ripples still present today. 

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