Eddington Far Web | The press

Back from vacation, the first film I ran to see in the movies is Eddington of Ari Aster, a filmmaker whose career I have been with interest since Hereditaryamong the best horror films I have seen in my life.

In addition, it was at the cinema of the park, my new completely renovated neighborhood cinema, which I love, because despite the renovations, it reminds me of the dark rooms of the 1990s – with much more comfortable seats.

Let’s go back to Eddington. We have talked a lot about the daring choice of the director to locate the intrigue of this contemporary western in the middle of Covid-19 pandemic, but it is only a backdrop, which only aggravates the rest. The real subject ofEddington is the impact of social networks and the media on the social fabric of a community.

And the least we can say is that Asster, a master of anxiety and paranoia, gives himself to heart by illustrating the transfer of far web in reality. It’s delusional, but much more digestible than his previous film, Beau Is Afraidthat I only recommend her finished fans.

In several interviews, the filmmaker says thatEddington was written by Twitter, the social network on which he spent too much time during the pandemic, at the risk of going crazy. Ari Aster also believes that this global crisis has been the rocking point of our loss of contact with reality, when we have all more or less sank in the meanders of the web that we drag today with us.

Taking up the traditional western codes, even its shots, the film features Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the clumsy and recalcitrant sheriff at the Eddington health measures, which has a tooth against Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the apparently progressive mayor, respectful of the port of the mask. In this little populous small town, the tension is palpable, between the absurdity of the pandemic situation, when there is no case of COVID-19 in Eddington, and a youth who wants to participate from afar in the Black Lives Matter movement with a handful of demonstrators.

When the sheriff decides to go to the elections against the mayor, everything goes in the knits, as the French say. Eddington is a very funny satire because it is pathetic, but also disturbing because we are a little made there collectively.

Monkeys with nuclear bombs, that’s what humanity looks in this story, which opens with the project to build a data center for artificial intelligence in Eddington. Or rather, as on the poster of the film, bison throwing themselves into the void, a famous work of the artist David Wojnarowicz entitled Untitled (Buffalos) which referred at the time to another epidemic, that of AIDS.

“All the stories and all the characters in Eddington are sort of training for AI, “said Ari Aster to Balado Mixed Signals. “People sail in a crisis while another crisis is in incubation. »»

All the interactions of the citizens of Eddington, however a small patelin, are parasitized by social networks and the intrusion of continuous news. In fact, they are unable to talk to each other without filming themselves, as if the truth or reality could only go through a phone and not in the white of the eyes.

“Each of the characters knows in the depths of him that something is wrong, but they disagree on what this thing is because they all live in different realities,” explains Ari Aster. They are unable to join. Each in their bubble of certainties, they come up against each other, and it creates this new logic which grows and ends up having all of them, which pushes them even more deeply in their convictions and their paranoia. It leads to violence because there is nothing in the air that holds them together. »»

In Eddingtonthe smartphone replaced the revolver in all duels, but in an armed country to the teeth, this can only lead to a bloodbath.

There are no good or bad guys in this film, that humans, too human, stuck in the spider web of algorithms, where each of their decisions radicalizes them and drives them more. In this sense, Eddingtonwhich gives the impression for two hours of being in a life -size twitter, is one of the first major cinematographic responses to what is eating us all round.

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