‘Eddington’ ignites an already politically-charged Cannes Film Festival

At a press conference for Ari Aster’s divisive film, the director and addressed a divided US and the “dangerous road” being walked by the nation.

Ari Aster is currently living in a state of blissful ignorance. It won’t last long. The director of “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid,” who has brought his politically volatile work “Eddington” to the Cannes Film Festival, admits he hasn’t seen any of the online reactions to his movie. “I’ve been very deliberately avoiding the discourse about the film,” he told CNN during a packed and often impassioned press conference at the festival on Saturday. “I’ll probably dip my head into the swamp and see what the f***’s going on in there, or something, but I haven’t done it yet.” “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Bulter, is set in small-town New Mexico during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Phoenix’s sheriff is baffled by mask policies and the apparent hysteria among the townspeople, while Pascal’s mayor is toeing the line (while also making dubious business deals with big tech to build a data center on the town’s outskirts). Their contretemps predates the pandemic, rooted in their relationships with the sheriff’s wife, an aloof, clearly depressed Emma Stone. The small-town drama is pulled wider by news events, namely the death of George Floyd and the protests movement that followed. Aster shoehorns all manner of hot-button topics: identity politics, social media silos, false flag attacks, and the allure of conspiracy theories, all facilitated by the wholesale erosion of truth in the digital age. The film is proving a potent Rorschach test. Less than 24 hours after it premiered, there’s already plenty of online chatter about where “Eddington’s” own politics stand, with commentators of all stripes – some sight unseen – making the case it speaks for them.