‘Eddington,’ a Greek tragedy in the Wild West

Like many Westerns, Eddington, Ari Aster’s latest feature, unfolds with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. It’s late May 2020 – the height of Covid. The ominous opening shot shows the construction site of an artificial-intelligence data center, which threatens the scarce water resources of the titular New Mexico town. A bird drops dead from the sky; a sick homeless man, coughing and rambling incoherently like a mad prophet, slouches toward the town, the dead bird clutched like an omen in his fist. From the outset, we already know the town is doomed. It’s not a question of if, but how. The Western genre and Greek-tragedy framing shape the exploration of this era’s still-disputed history, transforming the recent past into something mythic.

The streets are deserted; lockdown is in effect. Our tragic protagonist, Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), is called to the town bar to prevent the homeless outsider from smashing his way in and interrupting a (masked) council meeting. Initially, Cross does not intervene – to spite Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal); the two don’t see eye-to-eye on the lockdown. (There are no recorded Covid cases in Eddington, Cross insists at one point in the film.) When the homeless man gains entry and coughs on everyone, Cross finally steps in, but is swiftly overpowered. The writing is on the wall: The town and its leadership have been infected.

Of course, the real infection isn’t Covid – not really. Just like in the Thebes of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the arrival of plague is the manifestation of a spiritual rot that has already taken hold of the town. State-enforced mask mandates and distancing rules foster paranoia and animosity. An old man, maskless, is banished from the grocery store and everyone applauds. Cross, who has asthma, opposes the mandate and hates seeing what the lockdown has done to the town and its people. “How did we get here?” he asks. “And even worse, is it worth it? At the cost of being at war with your neighbors?”

Meanwhile, Garcia cozies up to the governor by enforcing his policy – and is rewarded with an engraved pocket watch – even though he and his son don’t always abide by the rules. He supports the construction of the data center as part of his reelection campaign, brushing aside concerns about how it will harm the town. Cross and Garcia embody a classic Western dyad: the lone ranger with a personal code versus the self-serving and corrupt government official – frontier morality and freedom versus Big Government.

Except this is 2020, not 1820. There is no frontier, and Big Government has expanded far beyond anything the Old West could have ever imagined, leaving Cross with little agency from the start. When he is told to put on his mask, even though he’s sitting alone in his truck, he complies. “Where’s your anger, Joe?” his mother-in-law asks him. Even at home, he is powerless. He wants children, but his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), refuses his advances. So Cross decides to direct his energy where he thinks he’ll be able to effect real change: He runs for mayor, impulsively announcing his candidacy with an online video. “We need to free each other’s hearts,” he says. Faced with impotence in public and at home, he appeals to the smallest and most fundamental unit of human society: the individual.

The human heart, it seems, is where the new frontier is, and the battle for control is waged on the internet, in the palm of your hand. Black squares, TikTok trends, murder hornets, Trump hysteria and conspiracy-theorist ramblings are interspersed throughout the film, taking us on a trip down bad-memory lane. Cross’s wife is enamored with a cult leader, Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), and obsessively watches his videos online. The data center on the outskirts of town makes this virtual threat a physical one, threatening to infest not only the minds but the bodies of the town’s inhabitants.

Cross’s mayoral campaign seals his fate. As in all Greek tragedies, the hero’s fatal flaw, his hubris, spells his downfall as he takes saving the town into his own hands. In an attempt to ruin Garcia, he rashly accuses him of having raped Cross’s wife years ago. Louise then leaves him to be with Vernon and posts a video discrediting her husband’s claim. Garcia slaps Cross while he’s responding to a noise complaint at a fundraiser; Katy Perry’s “Firework” blares in the background, heightening the scene’s desperate absurdity.

Cross snaps. He finds the homeless man has broken back into the town bar where our story began. He is guzzling alcohol, raving. Cross – like so many heroes trying to prevent prophesied fate – shoots this messenger who carried the omen of destruction to Eddington. He sends the body downriver, letting out a cough as he does. He then snipes Garcia and his son dead in their home and spray-paints “No Justice, No Peace” on the wall to frame social-justice warriors. When he sees another opportunity to frame his deputy, he does. He has betrayed his own mission.

As if summoned, masked attackers descend upon the town, arriving in a private jet. Their identity and agenda are left ambiguous. Are they Antifa? Guns hired by the tech company behind the data center to destabilize the town? Aster doesn’t say, but a Western shootout commences. The sequence is masterful and gripping, gory and suspenseful. But we were told how this would end at the very beginning. Cross is stabbed in the brain, though he miraculously survives. Garcia’s death makes Cross the new mayor, despite his being a vegetable in the care of his mother-in-law. She wheels him out for the eventual opening of the data center; all he can do is watch.

The film ends as it began: with a shot of the data center. Big Tech is the new Big Government, fencing in our minds. Once, pioneers expanded West seeking fortune and freedom. That landscape closed, but the terrain of the individual mind remained open – until technology began reaching ever more deeply into the well of our psyches. Whatever we thought we lost before, Ari Aster’s Eddington reminds us that there is always more to lose on the final frontier, that of the self.