Ari Aster Explains the ‘Very Strong Politics’ of Eddington

Each of Ari Aster’s films, from Hereditary and Midsommar to Beau Is Afraid and now Eddington, has been more divisive than the last. This fact surprises Aster, who never imagined that his debut, a slow-burning rumination on grief and demonic possession, would gross $89 million worldwide. Success gave A24’s golden boy a high bar to clear, at least commercially speaking, but he seems hell-bent on ignoring the bar altogether. His new movie is a two-and-a-half-hour dark comedy set in a politically fraught New Mexico town at the height of COVID-19’s ugly social fallout.

Aster says he didn’t intend for Eddingington to be a provocation, but some of the reactions at its Cannes Film Festival premiere in May treated it as exactly that. Even with five years of distance from the lockdown era, a movie that captures the friction between Black Lives Matter activists and anti-masking blowhards is guaranteed to tick people off, especially one that satirizes both camps as a way of indicting American culture at large. It’s a big swing for a director whose previous film was deemed a major financial flop. (Its global gross landed just over $10 million.) It’s also his second consecutive collaboration with Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the sheriff of the town of Eddington, Joe Cross, a mask agnostic embroiled in a feud with the liberal mayor (Pedro Pascal) that’s equal parts personal and political.

You had a lot of box-office momentum coming off of Hereditary and Midsommar, and then you went and made what you knew would be a more divisive and audience-challenging movie. Given the fact that Beau Is Afraid stumbled commercially, what do you make of the experience when looking back on it?
It’s a film that I am incredibly proud of, and I love that film. I’m so happy I made it. In some ways, I was expecting the film to be more, I would say, warmly embraced because I saw it as a comedy and as an adventure film. It’s a very neurotic odyssey, and I guess there are things about it that are challenging. In retrospect, it makes sense that it’s an alienating film, but I was excited about making this big comic-nightmare epic. I try to never think too strategically. The one time I was thinking strategically was probably with Hereditary because I needed to get a first film made and I knew that it would probably be easier to get a somewhat ambitious film off the ground if it were a horror film, especially because my sensibilities tend to be already kind of macabre.

The tropes in Hereditary are more familiar — possession, scary house, séances — which makes it your most obviously commercial film thus far. 
Although, even with that one, I was a little bit surprised that it was so embraced, because I saw that film as being deeply punishing in a way.

What do you think your career would look like if Beau had been your first movie, as you once intended it to be? 
There were several films that I tried to get made first, and Beau wasn’t the first of them. Beau was the one I had the most fun writing. The first version of it was very different from what I ended up making. But we needed the budget that we had on Beau. If I had made that first, it would have been woefully underresourced. That version of Beau was just more strictly comic. It was episodic in the same way, but I would say it was less — whatever the last third of that film is.

Surreal?
No, it was just as surreal. And part of the reason I made Beau after Midsommar and not Eddington is because I felt like it might be my last opportunity to ever make Beau.

What do you mean by that?
Just that I had a certain amount of goodwill to burn.

So you did know, somewhere deep down, that the movie was risky.
Yeah. I think at that point I understood what was easier to get made and what was harder to get made, and this was a film that had less precedent than anything else I wanted to make. I couldn’t really point to another film and say, “See, this was successful.”

You steadfastly refuted that the movie was autobiographical while promoting the film. Looking back with some distance, were you intentionally keeping some of the more personal elements close to the vest?
I never like to talk about my personal life. Beau is very personal, but they’re all personal.

Do you maintain that it’s as un-autobiographical as you said at the time?Well, it depends on what you mean by autobiographical. Nothing that happens to Beau in that movie has ever happened to me, so I would say it is emotionally autobiographical. Beau’s experience of the world is not that far from my own, but the film is also a movie of extremes. It’s also a film that’s about anxiety, and it’s a film that takes catastrophic thinking and makes it literal. I am somebody with a lot of anxiety and a lot of ambivalence, and I wanted to make a film that really dramatized those feelings.

I think people just wanted you to talk about your relationship with your mother. 
I love my mother. She’s a poet and a visual artist, and I probably wouldn’t be making films without her.

When promoting Beau, you said your next movie would be a western with Joaquin Phoenix, which was Eddington. I know you have tremendous respect for Joaquin’s process as an actor, but it seems like the two of you had a hot-and-cold relationship on Beau. Stephen McKinley Henderson said you guys would frequently “get upset and make up in the span of seconds.” How did those dynamics play out on Eddington?
The experience was pretty similar on Eddington. I’m really close with Joaquin. We’re friends, and Joaquin and I are very similar in the way we work. We’re putting all of ourselves in the work, and we’re very serious about what we’re doing. Joaquin is somebody who loves the process but struggles through the process. He hits walls and gets lost. I think getting lost is a very important part of the process, because it’s very important to him that it doesn’t ever become rote. Once we know the path and what the scene is about, I’ve found that it might be frustrating in the moment, but when he hits those walls, we have to navigate our way out of the woods. It always makes the scene more alive and fresh.

I’m somebody who shot-lists and figures out blocking in advance of shooting — or sometimes even preproduction. With Joaquin, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to work that way. Part of what was exciting about it on Beau was that this was going to be a challenge to me in a way that I think I needed. I think I’m too fastened to my plan, and I wanted to give up a little bit of agency here. Joaquin can smell it when you have a plan, and he doesn’t want you to have a plan. For important scenes or complicated scenes, I have maybe a vague shot list, but I go in with no plan. I see what he wants to do and then I’ll move things around if that’s necessary or helpful. Then I’ll write my shot list. Joaquin likes to rehearse a lot, so the weekend before any given week, we will determine what the big scenes are and we’ll go to the location with the other actors to rehearse. I find that part of the process really useful. It gives me a very firm ground to stand on.

With him specifically or in general?
With him specifically, but this is something I will do from now on, whether he’s in the movie or not. Joaquin is somebody who, on a certain day, can maybe fall into a black hole or get stuck. I am also given to that. You have to find your way out of it with him. Nobody would say the process is easy with Joaquin, but who wants an easy process? That’s how you make a mediocre movie.

Some people are starting to call Joaquin your muse. What do you think of that?
I’m not sure what that means. He’s a brilliant actor and somebody that electrifies any scene that he’s in. I think he’s a really important partner.

Given Beau Is Afraid’s spotty box office, does part of you worry that people won’t want to spend two and a half hours revisiting the peak of COVID?
I’d be worried no matter what because the climate for films right now is so strange. Films that would normally be obvious hits are not. It feels very existential.

But is there perhaps something uniquely challenging about the COVID material in terms of finding a commercial audience?
Yeah, but it’s so central to where we are and who we are. Part of me understands why there isn’t necessarily more work about that time, because I don’t think we’ve actually metabolized just how seismic that moment was — and we’re also still living in it. But I think that moment is the last remaining link to whatever old world we were living in. There had always been a common ground everybody could stand on, an agreed version of reality. You could disagree about how you felt about what was happening, but we agreed about what it was in a literal sense.

Listen, I have very strong politics, and it was important to me that those not be too clear. I think by the end, hopefully, those are pretty apparent.

The movie can at least comment on the era with a rearview mirror that those movies made during lockdown couldn’t. Did you find catharsis in working through this potentially permanently damaging moment of our recent history?
Yeah. One of the best things that came out of the process was that I’ve always wanted to make a film about New Mexico. I grew up there. My family still lives there. I know New Mexico probably better than any other place. I was writing this script in a state of fear and anxiety about the world. I was writing it at the time the film was set, and I was really just trying to get it all on paper. We had reached a boiling point, and it felt like things were about to explode. It’s gone down to more of a simmer. It’s gradually just plateaued, so we’re just living with it. When I came back to rewrite the script, I went back out to New Mexico, drove around the state, and went to different small towns to talk to police and mayors. I went to different counties to talk to sheriffs, went to pueblos.

You talked to them specifically about their experience with COVID?
Yes, and about their feelings about politics in New Mexico. It’s a very specific, interesting place. It’s a blue state, but most of the smaller towns are red. And the governor of New Mexico is sort of a controversial figure. I did not find anybody who did not have very strong convictions about what was happening. Many of the characters in the film are modeled on different people I met. For instance, Joaquin’s character is based on the sheriff of a vast county with a small population. He had a very passionate, long-standing feud with the mayor. And the mayor was a really interesting guy who, before he ran for mayor, went to town hall with a gun on his person, and he was ejected from town hall. He ran on a platform of, “I’m going to make it so that if you come to town hall, you have to have to have a gun.”

Oh my God.
And he won!

Fascinating.
The sheriff and him were really at odds on a lot of things, especially mask mandates. Joe Cross is based on that man, even his wardrobe. I flew back out to New Mexico so that Joaquin could meet him and a few other people that I really liked, and we spent a day just driving around the county with the sheriff. He came to set several times to consult.

What did fictionalizing the location allow you to do that choosing a real American city might not have? 
Honestly, if I had written the script before doing my travels, the movie might be set in Truth or Consequences, where we shot most of it. I wanted the town of Eddington to function as something of a microcosm for the country. It just felt right to invent that town but have it be comprised of a lot of those details that I was finding. Like, a business might be inspired by something we saw in Tucamacari when I was scouting with my production designer and cinematographer. Truth or Consequences was actually one of the first places we found, and it felt perfect, but it’s two hours away from Albuquerque. Most of our crew would be coming from Albuquerque, so we’d need to put them up if we shot there. So it was expensive, but it became clear to us that it was important.

Early in the film, we see a swell of memes and internet commentary from the era, and one of those is a meme from the motion picture Ma. Have you seen Ma? And if so, what do you think of it?
I have seen Ma. I like it. It’s fun. We were torn on what to use because that was a very popular meme, like the Sopranos one where you have Tony sitting in the diner for “my plans” and then the black screen for “2020.” Or we had the My Girl one, with Macaulay Culkin and a bee’s nest. I wanted to use that one, but my producers and editors convinced me that a lot of younger people wouldn’t get it.

Well, I’m glad that’s the one you went with. In terms of politics, Eddington takes an equal-opportunity approach to its satire. White social-justice performativity is as up for grabs as conspiracy theorizing and anti-masking science skepticism. Was there part of you that was aware it would spark some controversy? 
I guess, but I wanted to pull back as far as I could and show as much of the environment as possible. If I could have included more characters and more corners of the internet without sacrificing coherency, I would have. The project is, How can I make a film about the incoherent miasma we’re living in without the film becoming a message? I mean, go on to Twitter and tell me that this movie is in any way more obscene or hyperbolic than what you find on the internet. In some ways, I feel that I was showing restraint in almost every character. It’s very important to me that this film is very empathetic in multiple directions. Some of those directions are oppositional, but every character in this movie cares about the world and has convictions about what’s happening. They just do not agree about what that is.

The thing that’s going to stick in people’s craw is, yes, the self-righteous theatrics of the extremely online are ripe for mockery. But is the film equating that with Trumpian anti-science? 
No. Listen, I have very strong politics, and it was important to me that those not be too clear. I think by the end, hopefully, those are pretty apparent. I wouldn’t argue that I’m equating one with the other. Sure, on one side you have people who are hypocritical and annoying, and maybe less sincere than they purport to be. And on another side, you have people who are ruining and destroying lives, yes. But maybe there’s a way to look back at the collective insanity and see where we are now and the path that we’re on and ask, Is there a way to get off of it? One thing I wanted to make very clear: Here were all of these people who were unreachable to each other. They did not have a way of talking to each other, and that’s a catastrophe.

What do you think Joe Cross gets right about his understanding of the world?
Joe — and this actually goes for just about every character in the film — sees that something is very wrong. He sees that the system is kind of sick. He’s looking at everything through a very strange, very specific window, and every other character is doing the same thing. In the first section of the film, Joe is somebody who sees a lot of the theatricality of the moment, and the messaging. Something that came with COVID was this very clear messaging and signaling: “Do this, stand here, say this, wear this.”

And some of that did become theater.
So you have a character that says, “Wait, no, I’m not gonna play by these rules.” But then what does he do? He turns on his phone and makes a video to post on the internet.

He does the most self-righteous thing he could do after encountering that confrontation in the grocery store.
Exactly. He can only see so far in front of his own nose. I still wear a mask because I’m a hypochondriac, but that’s neither here nor there. And I remember being absolutely terrified of COVID. I was paralyzed for a long, long time.

You wrote a contemporary western long before COVID. Are there elements of it in Eddington? 
I almost regret even mentioning that because it just feels not that useful. I had written a script that was a contemporary western that was about a feud between two people in a small town in New Mexico, and one of those people was a sheriff. I had given up on it. I’d lost interest. And then when I was struck by the impulse to make a film about COVID set in 2020, that suddenly felt like a very appropriate and exciting framework.

I hope you don’t take this as a demerit, but I would argue that this is your least stylized film to date, if only because it departs the most from horror and surrealism. Where does it leave you wanting to go next, genre- and subject-wise?
I guess it’s my least stylized film, but in some ways I don’t agree. The film becomes very heightened, and I would say that my style is still here, whatever that is. Certainly in the first half, the film is very grounded and more naturalistic than the others, but probably no less formal than the others. And the movie ends as an action movie, and a pretty absurd one. In all this talk about the film’s politics, I don’t want it to get lost that I want the film to be funny and I want it to be fun.

What do I see myself doing next? I have a few ideas. I have three scripts I’ve been writing independently of each other. I don’t know which one is next. One thing that I think carries through most of them is a continuing desire to stay in the present and be talking about this moment.

You’re not looking to make a period piece.
Well, I do have one period piece that’s also sort of a horror film. And then I have one film that’s sort of a science-fiction film that moves into the future. But I would say it’s feeling important to me to stay in what’s happening right now. I’ve been thinking about this thing that David Hare said, which is that an artist’s responsibility is to reflect his own time. At this moment, I’m really feeling that that’s true for me as well.

I wonder if part of you feels that way because the major studios aren’t doing it anymore, with maybe the exception of Jordan Peele’s work. We’re not getting Alan J. Pakula movies anymore. 
I’m really worried about where we are right now, and that is at the front of my mind. But I love those films, and I think there’s a lot of Parallax View in this movie — definitely more than All the President’s Men. I think most filmmakers my age, and the generation above me, long for whatever was happening in the ‘60s and ‘70s. That seems like the period for American film — and the ‘90s.