What happens when Ari Aster, a director known for his nightmarish films, takes on COVID-era America? From the looks of the Eddington teaser, we’re about to find outâand I, for one, am already scared.
Last week A24 released the first Eddington poster, which features the tag line âHindsight is 2020â (get it?) over a tweaked image of âUntitled (Falling Buffalo),” artist David Wojnarowicz’s photograph of a museum diorama depicting bison being herded off a cliff by Native American huntersâan image Wojnarowicz created amid amid the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, another public-health emergency exacerbated by government inaction.
This morning we got the first teaser, which consists mostly of a tight shot of an Instagram feed. The setting: The (fictional) town of Eddington, New Mexico. The date is June 2, 2020. We see a Fox News clip of a sheriff, played by Joaquin Phoenix, saying, “If you value your life, you should think twice, because the people of Eddington like guns”; Austin Butler, preaching about how “we are not a coincidence”; Emma Stone, as a woman giving a direct-to-camera video denying her husband’s “announcement”; and Pedro PascalâID’d as Mayor Ted Garciaâgiving an impassioned speech about fighting the pandemic.
The aura of all of this is tense and dark, but if you look closely you’ll find some jokes. One features a girl dancing with the overlaid text: “When you just finish reading James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room.'” An account called “bengazhi_dad” posts a conspiracy theory about Michael Jackson and 9/11. Finally, we see who’s scrollingâit’s Phoenix, likely the man at the center of all of this chaos, which apparently is drawing national attention.
So is this a relatively straightforward fable about the tensions that emerged five years ago? Honestly, with Aster behind the camera, who knows? His last film was Beau Is Afraid, a surreal modern Greek tragedy about a man with the biggest mommy issues known to man; judging by the Eddington teaser, this one will be the most stressful experience imaginable (aside from, you know, actually living through the recent history it depicts.)
Aster, meanwhile, has a personal connection to New Mexico, having grown up in Santa Fe. He’ll show us his full vision when Eddington premieres at Cannes this May.