Cannes 2025 – Eddington: Joaquin Phoenix in a rabid portrait of contemporary America
With his first film in competition in Cannes, virtuoso, exhausting and exciting, Ari Aster confirms his unique place in American cinema today.
After the triumphs ofHeredity and MidsommarAri Aster began to distance himself from the kind of horror, probably for fear of being locked in a box or cluttered by labels – mainly the formidable label “Elevated Horror “. Beau is afraidher third long, three-hour psychoanalytic odyssey, seriously blurred the tracks, between black comedy, film-trip and cartoon psyche. “But who is Ari Aster?” was one of the hundreds of questions that were asked when leaving the room.
Eddington Confirm in any case that with him, horror is never far away – if we hear by horror of nightmare visions, violence that takes guts, cold sweats, a feeling of haunt and amazement, and the impression of sinking into a Bad trip more sticky with each step. The nightmare, here, is that of America in decay of the 2020s – May 2020, very precisely, in the heart of the Covid pandemic and at the time of a new flambé of the Black Lives Matter movement, in response to the murder of George Floyd. The film takes place in a town of New Mexico, which serves as microscopic metonymy (ridiculously microscopic) to whole America. And the idea is to immerse ourselves in an explosive shaker condensing all the ills, faults and obsessions Maboules of the time, in case our daily dose of continuous info and doomscrolling is not enough.
The entire most hysterized US population, politically upset, or just completely lost, is therefore there: conspiracy, anti -fed activists, illuminated gurus, victims of sexual violence, influencers, revolted WOKE youth, communities heated white by systemic racism, citizens who do not “contract” more, delirious clodos, against the background of the Mentions of Doctor Faacte and Magi Tucker Carlson. A monstrous parade convened via a myriad of computers and smartphones screens, frames in the frame that gives Eddington Its aggressive and patraque appearance. A received idea says that it would not be interesting to film people with their noses in their phone (which is why three -quarters of the US films take place in the 20th century). Not interesting? When Ari Aster and photo director Darius Khondji sticks to it, it becomes.
The film is attached to the course of a sheriff at the end of the roll, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, always very good in front of Aster’s camera) about to go into politico-psychotic spinning. Because he refuses to wear a mask because of his asthma, and he became a micro-star of the networks after having helped another citizen without mask to do his shopping at the local supermarket, Joe decides to run for the post of mayor against the current councilor (Pedro Pascal), who supports the Big Business Government. Between them, there is the wife of Cross, Louise (Emma Stone, always starting a Zinzin experience), an unhappy artist suffering from an unspeakable evil.
So much for the starting point, which gives only a very vague idea of the hallucinated dimension that will soon take the matter. Quite tortuous and elusive in its installation, very creaky in its black humor which seems to return back to back all parts of fractured America, Eddington will start to show an astounding formal mastery in his third act, when he plunges for good in the dark night and is working to make felt concretely, physically, what disorientation (political, moral, existential) is, the scrambling of the landmarks and the perception, the feeling of disintegration of reality, and the floor of the cows that suddenly hides under our feet.
We speak of cows because the frame is that of the ancestral western, an immemorial America and that the protagonist is look like a cowboy. But we are in the world after No country for old mena notch even further than the coen in darkness and panic. A mention of John Ford at the end of the film, and before that the express and devastating visit of a museum dedicated to the history of the West, confirms Aster’s ambition to be part of the “great American novel” – a genre (of cinema) in itself. His novel to his own, nourished by postmodernism, is missed, abrasive, exhausting, clearly not made to please everyone, but absolutely unique in its kind. Who is Ari Aster, damn it? A great American filmmaker, well, this is a role that suits him.
EddingtonAri Aster, with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone… Duration 2h25. In the cinema on July 16.
