When it came to unpacking the politics of MAGA culture and Donald Trump in Ari Aster’s Eddington, there was no dodging the subject for the filmmaker and stars Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix at the Cannes presser this afternoon.
Actually, Phoenix let Pascal do all the talking.
Eddington is a melting pot about the fallout from Covid, the frenzy of social media and how Black Lives Matter gripped the country. The pic follows crusty Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), who decides to take on the town’s mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). But the odds are greatly stacked against Cross, and he tries to take the situation into his own hands.
Expounded Pascal when asked how the politics of the movie speaks to the Trumpian era: “It’s very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this; it’s far too intimidating a question for me to address. I’m not informed enough. I want people to be safe and protective. I want very much to be on the right side of history.”
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He added: “I felt like [Aster] wrote something that was all our worst fears as that lockdown experience was already a fracturing society. This was building toward an untethered sense of reality, and there is a point of not going back. I was overwhelmed by that fear, and it’s wonderful it was confirmed by Ari.”
Said Aster about his Cannes Film Festival debut, “I wrote this movie in a state of fear and anxiety. I wanted to try and pull back and show what it feels like to live in a world where nobody can agree on what is real anymore.”
He added: “I feel like for the last 20 years we’ve fallen into this age of hyper-individualism and that social force that used to be central in liberal mass democracies, which is an agreed-upon thing in the world, that is gone now. Covid felt like the moment where that link was finely cut for good.”
Asked whether there would be a second civil war in America, Aster quipped, “I don’t speak English!”
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“I feel like we’re on a dangerous road and we’re living in an experiment that hasn’t gone well,” the Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid filmmaker said. “I feel there is no way out of it. What I said what mass liberal democracies always had, this fundamental agreement, we agree what we’re arguing about, that system was coming from power. So it’s not like suddenly like there’s this bad power out there. It’s always been there, but right now it’s chaos.
“I think people feel powerless,” he said.
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For Aster, Eddington is about what happens when isolated people come up against an another.
“I think fear is the way that they win, so we should keep telling stories,” said Pascal in response to a question by Chaz Ebert about U.S. toughening border patrol with Canada, “Don’t let them win.”
“I’m looking desperately for hope,” said Aster about the current divided political climate in the U.S., “I said it earlier, and I’ll say it again, we need to re-engage with each other.”
