Pedro Pascal had a strong message on current political chaos in the United States at the Cannes press conference for “Eddington” by Ari Aster, telling journalists: “Fuck people who try to scare you”.
When the actors – including Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Austin Butler – were also invited to be worried about entering the United States after making a film with such a strong political message, Pascal replied: “Fear is the way they win.”
“So keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,” he said. “Fuck people who try to scare you, you know? And retaliate. It is the ideal way to do it by telling stories. And don’t let them win.”
“Eddington” was presented last night at a standing ovation of five minutes, during which Phoenix became visibly emotional. The film A24 – which does not hesitate to embrace the Maga movement – is fixed at the height of the pandemic cochem in May 2020 and follows “a confrontation between a small town sheriff (Phoenix) and the mayor (Pascal)” which “stretches a barrel of powder as a neighbor translates against the neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico”. Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward and Clifton Collins Jr. complete the casting.
Earlier in the press conference, Pascal was also asked about Trump’s immigration policies and was frank about the responsibility he feels by speaking on such a subject.
“Obviously, it is very scary that an actor participates in a film to speak in a way of problems like this. It is far too intimidating the question for me to really approach, I am not informed enough,” he said. “I want people to be safe and protected, and I want to live on the right in history. I am an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and that I had not had the privilege of this, I do not remember what had happened to us.
Speaking of his inspiration for “Eddington”, Aster said that he had written the film “in a state of fear and anxiety for the world”.
“I wanted to show what it does to live in a world where no one can agree on what is real,” he said. “In the past 20 years, we have fallen into this age of hyper -individualism. This social force which was previously in liberal mass democracies – and contained the vision of the world – which disappeared now. Covid looked like this link was finally cut for good. I wanted to make a film about what America felt, for me. I am very worried.”
Pascal said that the themes of the script had resonated so strongly with him when he read that he “had to be part of”. “It was like the first time that we had a mole, like an almost denunciator, someone from the inside like” that’s what happens “,” he added. “And it was really powerful for me, and I don’t think I understood it until I see it.”
Variety‘S Owen Gleiberman congratulated “Eddington” in his criticism, calling the film a “frantic Western thriller” which proposes to “capture the rampant unreality of what America becomes”.
“Eddington”, although it is not a comedy, highlights an angry, sinister and perhaps crazy new America that it considers with an impassive tone of hectic joy. And the film presents us a fully vision of this transformed society, “continues Gleiberman.” As Aster presents it, what happened to America is a question of cocovan and all that the implacable rules of the pandemic have made us. “
