When the writer / director Ari Aster defended the ovation after the premiere of Cannes of his Western “Eddington” division of 2020 (July 16, A24), he said: “I feel very privileged to be here. It is a dream that has become. Thank you very much for doing me. And, I don’t know, sorry?
Indeed, participants in the festival were fiercely divided by its 145-minute portrait of a fictitious city of New Mexico embarked by Covid, BLM, Acab, You-Name-IT-2012-Buz-Concept during the darkest season of American Lives in recent memory. Joaquin Phoenix (“Beau is Great” from Aster plays a conservative sheriff who decides to run against his opponent Pro-Masks and Tests by Gavin Newsom, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), during the election of the local mayor.
Meanwhile, at home, the character of Phoenix, Joe Cross, is in a quarantine bubble with his wife stamped by the Hysteria Louise (Emma Stone) and his mother obsessed with the conspiracy of the far right (Deirdre O’Connell), the type for whom hydroxychloroquine was probably a panacea. But Joe’s campaign is all anti-masks, anti-vacuums, as well as the threat of the head of worship Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) also posing a political and personal life.
The film has triggered massive debates from top to bottom on the Croisette since its first Friday evening, with the most starred red carpet so far and a press conference on Saturday afternoon with Aster with its actors Phoenix, Pascal (in a high-sleeved top), Stone (in a pixie cup, his hair that grew “Bugonia”) and to play for Yorgos Lanthimos ” The next Commander of Phoenix. Indiewire spoke to people who loved or hated the film, rarely with all the opinions between the two and certainly never without a strong response from a kind of person – whether boredom or in rapture of replay in front of aster of our worst cocovable memories.
“Eddington” could be a difficult sale for the public who does not want to be submitting again in the summer of 2020 and all the chaos and anxieties that he broke out. Other experts to whom I spoke to defend “Eddington” as a necessary social satire that makes fun of this year’s panic, while summarizing all this in a single film like never before. Indiewire’s critic, David Ehrlich, wrote in his criticism that “few other filmmakers would have the required chutzpah” to remove this film, “and we should probably all be grateful that none of them have tried”.
“It’s very scary to participate in a film that talks about problems like this,” said Pascal at the press conference. “It is far too intimidating a question to speak to me. I am not informed enough. I want people to be safe and protective. I want a lot to be on the right side of the story.
“Eddington” takes shots on both sides of the aisle, roasting the liberal posture in the form of a youth of social justice like Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), which displays Tiktoks on James Baldwin and the guards of the possibility of having a position on “Land Stolen”. “The character of the Sheriff of Phoenix, meanwhile, could only be hunted from the era of Trump, while he shoots against the mandates of mask and is wary of the manifestations of inspiration of George Floyd acting his community. At one point, he swaggers in a grocery with the pompous of the most classic cowboys of Western, Gun-on-Hip.
Pascal added: “I had the impression that (aster) wrote something that was all our worst fears because this locking experience was already a fracturing society. This was built towards a feeling of reality without attachment. There is one point not to go back. I was overwhelmed by this fear, and it was wonderful that he was confirmed by Ari. ”
ASTER, whose last functionality is a hairpin to hair of the sensations and chills of kinds of films like “Hereditary” and “Midsomomar” and is far from the spirit of intrusive-thought bustering of “Beautiful is frightened”, added what it wrote in a state of fear and anxiety. “Eddington” is his first feature film to present in Cannes.
“I have the impression that we are on a dangerous road, and we live in an experience that has not been well done,” said Aster (via the deadline) about his Western Maga- et Liberal. “I think there is no way to get out … mass liberal democracies have always had this fundamental agreement that we agree with what we discuss, this system came from power. So it’s not like suddenly there was this bad power there. It has always been there, but right now it’s chaos. ”
Stone, who connected with Aster in the middle of his 2024, “Beautiful is afraid”, said that his research on conspiracy theories that turn her character against her husband even ended up modifying her personal algorithms on social networks (via variety).
“The only additional thing that scared me a little in the algorithm system was to look for some of the things in this film that were not in my algorithm, unfortunately, added them to my algorithm,” she said. “Because once you have started to google it, you are starting to see more and more things. So it’s a real rabbit hole, very quickly. Unfortunately, I’m still fed with crazy shit.”
“Eddington” is always the first of conversation competition most in conversation in Cannes, with divided criticisms on his social message and his rhythm (he is currently at 63 on Metacritic, where you can find criticism everywhere on the map). How A24 will market this film – only one teaser has been published so far, showing Phoenix Doom -Frolling through familiar images of the deepest era – is an intriguing question in the dissemination of its July theatrical release.
The “civil war” of Alex Garland, another post-comfortable story of national conflict, did for A24 last year, collecting more than $ 127 million by explaining a factor of fascination in a divided in the United States. Who will “Eddington” be called to? Be that as it may, he opposed the audiences of Cannes to each other – Screen Tell described this as “Wan satire”, while the variety deemed it “cheeky provocative” – and will undoubtedly continue to stir up the debate in summer.
