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Ari Aster’s Eddington Is Bracingly Nasty and Unsure of What It’s Trying to Say
The Midsommar director turns to a small town during the pandemic for a darkly funny depiction of how the pandemic broke our brains.
While he’s not a COVID denialist exactly, he is in denial about the virus arriving in his part of the planet, preferring to think of it as not a “here problem.” His own “here problem” is bar owner and mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who has a past with Louise, who’s always in an N-95, and who exudes a liberal smarm that he clearly can’t stand. Eddington is surprisingly sharp with its granular culture-war details, from the “Your being manipulated” sign on Joe’s truck to the ways people fearfully bludgeoned one another over still-shifting contagion guidelines to protest-curious teenager Brian’s (Cameron Mann) Twitter feed. The simpler, closer community he speaks about going back to clearly never existed, but the one that’s rushing in via smartphone screens is justifiably frightening and tumultuous, filled with conflicting information and sketchy self-appointed leaders trying to shout over the din.
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