Joan in Phoenix, Pedro Pascal
“EDDINGTON” My rating: C+ (HBO MAX)
148 minutes | MPAA rating: R
“Eddington” is a mess, but at least it’s an ambitious mess.
For his followup to “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” filmmaker Ari Aster has come up with a different sort of horror film in which the threat comes not from the supernatural but from within ourselves.
Unfolding in the sun-baked burg of Eddington, N.M., this drama attempts nothing less than to summarize all the roiling currents of contemporary America. Which is a nice idea, but it devolves into a credulity-crushing melodrama populated less by characters than by various poltical/social points of view.
The time is the early months of the Covid pandemic, and Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) has his hands full on just about every front. At home there’s his childlike and sickly wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her conspiracy-crazed mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell).
On his patrols of the town Joe finds himself refereeing standoffs between pandemic-panicked citizens in government-mandated face masks and those individuals who refuse to muffle up, whether because it’s physically uncomfortable or because they smell the nefarious efforts of Big Brother to smother individual identity.
It’s also election season in Eddington, with mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) running for another term. Ted’s campaign centers on bringing in a high-tech outfit to erect a data farm, or a bitcoin mine, or some other damn electicity-gobbling enterprise. The whole thing smacks of an insider deal.
There are the kids, the teenagers who aren’t content just to smoke grass behind the grocery store. No, they’ve all climbed on a high horse to protest everything they don’t like — which is just about everything from Native America rights to old folks who can’t be bothered with personal pronouns. They’re putty in the hand of the charismatic Vernon (Austin Butler), a rabble rouser who may be a good guy…or maybe a Charles Manson.
And finally there’s Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.), a hirsute desert rat who wanders through town babbling angrily at demons real and imagined.
Pushed way past exasperation, Joe decides to take matters into his own hands. He’ll run for mayor, too. Except that the key to his campaign is assassinating the opposition.
Once the crime’s been committed “Eddington” becomes a sort of Jim Thompson thriller with Joe working overtime to cover up his crime and blame it on somebody else. Except that there are a couple of armed vigilantes (identified in the credits as Antifa Terrrorists 1 and 2) who begin stalking him in a beautifully staged nighttime action sequence.
By the time “Eddington” wraps up after nearly 2 1/2 hours the patience of most viewers will be worn thin. As a schematic of our current state of affairs the film offers some good nasty fun, but there’s not a character on screen we can actually like.
Tessa Thompson
“HEDDA” My rating: B-(Prime Video)
107 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Hendrick Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” gets a heavy-duty makeover in “Hedda,” in which writer/director Nia DaCosta makes actress Tessa Thompson the scene-stealing centerpiece.
Ibsen’s original was set in the 1890s Norway; DaCosta moves the action to post-war Britain.
The story is pretty much the same with some radical casting changes…new bride Hedda (Thompson) is miserable with her stuffy academic hubby George (Tom Bateman) and uses a big cocktail party attended by his colleagues to do mischief. She’s supposed to be boosting George’s profile for a much sought-after collegiate gig, but Hedda’s personal demons are going strong.
George’s main competition is Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), an openly gay female academic working on what will surely be a best-selling book. Eileen is a recovering alcoholic; she’s also a former lover of Hedda, though she now cohabits with the mousy Thea (Imogen Poots).
In the course of the evening Hedda will sabotage Eileen’s relationship, her husband’s career, and her own life.
“Hedda” has been very well acted, and the updatings made to the original text are intriguing and evocative.
But here’s the thing…when I think of Britain in the 1950s I’m thinking of the rather stiff world of PBS’s “Granchester,” a time when the old social mores were only slowly changing and gasoline was still being rationed.
What we get here, though, is a Bacchanal right out of the 1920s, with stuffy college professors getting blotto and dancing the boogie woogie. The film’s frantic ambience felt forced and overstated.
If you can get past the anachronistic elements, “Hedda” offers some terrific acting. If.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 