Pop Culture Happy Hour - Eddington And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Eddington plunges us back into that familiarly distressing time of the early days of the pandemic. Directed by Ari Aster (Hereditary and Midsommar) Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal star as political rivals in a small southwest town. Their conflict collides with the news of George Floyd's murder, which brings tensions to a full-on boil for the whole community. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Ariasher's the kind of filmmaker who loves to make the viewer squirm and cringe. He's done it with hereditary midsummer. And now there's Eddington, which plunges us back into that familiarly distressing time of the early days of the pandemic. It stars Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as political rivals in a small southwest town. And it's set during a period when many of us were social distancing and under lockdown or something like it. As they face off, a national news story sends the town's eclectic residents into a tailspin. I'm Glenn Weldon. And I'm Aisha Harris.

And today we're talking about Eddington. I'm Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Walter Chow. He's a writer, critic, and film instructor at the University of Colorado. Welcome back, Walter. How's so happy to be here. Yes, this is a sad, strange, as I've already said, distressing movie. But let's just get into it.

So it's May 2020 in Eddington, New Mexico. Jo, Joe Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the town's prickly sheriff, and Pedro Pascal is Ted Garcia, the stern mayor who's up for re-election. Now, Joe's not a fan of the masking mandate, and one day, Ted shames him in public for not wearing a mask. Naturally, this radicalizes Joe, who decides to run against Ted in the mayoral race. The men also have some personal beef dating back many years. But their conflict collides with the news of George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis, and the weight of both events, plus the pandemic, obviously, brings tensions to a full-on boil for the whole community. Eddington is in theaters now.

Walter, I'm going to start with you. I could barely even kind of scratch the surface here because there's a lot going on. I'm curious to hear your initial just like off-the-domed thoughts on this. Well, you know, I think it answers the question of how you satirize a period that it's unsaturizable in a way. You know, this is some of my favorite things like Veep, Julie Dreyfus show. had to end because they could no longer be as awful as reality was. That's really the challenge of satire, I think, is to, how do you exceed the atrocity? How do you exceed the absurdity of our day-to-day consistently?

Eddington answers really well, I think, how difficult that is and why there aren't more of them. Because of its lack of total success, I guess I would say, and the feeling of frustration that I left the film with. And yet I also left feeling like I admired. the attempt. I mean, there's so little pandemic movies that actually try to address these little bubbles of conspiracy, if you will. And, you know, I would say that it does

try to say the extremes of both sides seem to be consumed with these conspiracies. So why don't we make a science fiction movie in which all of them are right in which every conspiracy theory is actually correct? Now, let's see what happens. And let's let it boil over

and perhaps predict what we're headed towards, boy, I wouldn't have dipped my toe into this. I'm kind of admiring of an artist that does that. Yeah, that's the thing, right, is that the pandemic seems both too close and yet not far enough in the distance to cover. So I echo a lot of your sentiment there, Walter. Glenn, tell me, bud, how are we feeling? I did not like this movie. I was angry that I didn't like it because I thought I knew Ari Aster's deal. I thought I had cracked his code.

And I never considered myself an Ariaster apologist, but maybe a defender. I thought here's a guy who makes horror films that are only horror films the first time you see them. Next time you watch them, they transform into hilarious comedies. Now, they're dark comedies, of course. But once you know the destination of his films, you can appreciate how he leads you to it. And you can also appreciate how, for example, in Hereditary, Oh, scary, scary, scary. But the steps you take to get there,

including but not limited to little diva head come off. It's kind of funny. It's kind of silly. Also, midsummer, those dudes are absurdly toxic. They deserve everything they get. And in Bo is Afraid, his most recent film, the transformation of everyday anxiety into nightmare. It's unsettling while you watch it.

But when you wake up from it, you can kind of sort of marvel at how every anxiety gets turned up to 11. He taps into collective anxieties and catastrophizes them. And that's a lot like when a friend or a therapist points out to you that you've just turned like a minor teeny tiny obstacle into the worst thing in the world. But when it's pointed out to you or when you see it reflected on the big screen, it can be kind of comforting and you can kind of think to yourself, maybe I should settle down. The difference here is that this destination is not worth this journey. This attempt at satire, I disagree with it, Walter, in a big way.

I think this is really toothless. This is really lazy. All it does is it comes up with the most hack observations. about both sides. White liberals made speeches about how they shouldn't be the one to make the speeches. Okay.

And we've been saying that for 20. We've been saying that for five years. People on the right, they make these frothing at the mouth Facebook posts and when they write you're being misled. They use the wrong yore. Okay. Is that all you got?

I mean, I have left Ariaster films before feeling all kinds of ways, but I always felt that he was in control of his narrative, that he knew exactly what he was stirring up in his audience, that everything on screen was there for a reason. And as this movie goes on, and on and on, two and a half hours, you can feel his

hands slipping off the steering wheel. All he stirred up in me was frustration and disappointment and a little anger. But at the end of the day, boredom. And boring is something I never thought I'd get from this guy. Oh, yeah. That's so interesting because I've found the other two movies that I've seen of his quite boring. I'm not on the Arias, Retire. I haven't been. And now, to come to this, I think kind of in between both you, Walter, and Glenn, in that what this film does successfully is it dramatizes a very familiar experience that we all had to deal with in some way or another. I think of the scene in the grocery store where another unmasked person is asked by the manager to leave and then everyone starts clapping. I vividly remember seeing

videos of that happening. I remember what it felt like to be restless and be like, why are, I hate that I can't see my friends contemplating. Do I want to go and like hang out in the woods with other people and social distance, even though we're technically that's supposed to? I understand that and I think it's like important to an extent that we have a filmmaker, especially a filmmaker of Aresstress Prominence, trying to reckon with that in some way. But I do agree with you, Glenn, that what it ultimately does is just. give us the obvious and land us in the obvious point. Even if I didn't actually know where, like, it kind of, it does go off the rails and it turned into something like very, very different from,

I think, what it starts as. Ultimately, I understood what the sentiment was going to be, especially when you throw in George Floyd on top of it, setting this in May 2020. So he filters all of that through Michael, who's played by Michael Ward. He is a colleague of the Joaquin Phoenix character. he's one of the officers in the town, and he's the sole black character in this movie. It felt like Ariasra had a better grip on just, like, recapturing the feeling and the sort of unease and tension, more so than he had a good grip on the actual political dynamics

and an understanding of, like, how to turn that into actual, like, drama and art. You know, I think I share a lot of your frustrations, both of yours, about the lack of real insight in this. And I didn't see it as a negative necessarily more like I felt kind of aligned with them about not having a lot of insight about this stuff. And that it just felt like a kind of accurate portrayal about the sort of uniform lack of insight that we're bringing to this conversation. Not this conversation, but the conversation.

This conversation is packed with insight. The thought that nobody in the movie actually has a different. any grasp of reality. It's all we kind of been muddled and confused. And Glenn, you sort of misspoke. He said 25 years and then you corrected yourself and said five years. I think that's actually accurate. It's like 120 years. It feels like a mirror to my own confusion. I don't think I'll ever watch it again. But it did remind me of exactly how I felt five years ago. And it kind of by the end of it reminds me of how I feel now. I don't know that that's an exercise that's entirely without. Well, you know, we talk a lot about how intention doesn't matter what you made matters.

We know the intent here. The slight critic Sam Adams said that at a post-screening Q&A, Astor said that what he wanted the film to feel like was like being on the internet. Well, mission accomplished, bro. Seriously. It is a dumb and pointless mission that wasn't worth two and a half hours of my time, but you did it. You nailed it. I kept thinking, why am I not reacting to this? Like, as a social commentary, that's, That's one thing. But as a film, I think everything here is being flatly asserted. Maybe an attempt not to villainize anybody, but when you flatly assert everything, you're not asserting anything.

And if this film had the style of the Coens or John Dole back in the day or of a Jim Thompson novel or of an Elmore Leonard novel, then the evil and it would be compelling. It would be, you know, kind of sinister. There'd be an element of fun to it. People would still be doing horrible things to each other. but as a piece of art, as a movie, there'd be a kind of, there'd be a sick thrill to it, something dangerous and intoxicating. But the evil here is also punishingly literal and obvious and familiar that you scroll through it every day. So, okay, maybe I thought, maybe that's not what he's doing as some kind of like stylistic exercise or even social comedy.

Maybe all he's doing. Maybe this is just one filmmaker's attempt to explain what we see every day. Maybe he's just setting out to illustrate how one unhappy, emotional. vulnerable person gets drawn into internet conspiracy theories and disinformation and gets exploited by, there's a grifter played by Austin Butler very briefly, how they sink into delusion and despair. The only way out is violence. I probably wouldn't have wanted to see that film because all I would have to do is log on to

my extended aunts, uncles, and cousins' Facebook pages. But that is a story that could be told if you could do it without dripping with disdain for your main character. Make no mistake. This film hates the Joaquin Phoenix character, but it wastes a lot of time pretending that it doesn't because it wants us to invest in him. It is constantly, in the early going, drawing distinctions between him and others like his more overtly racist deputy or like his mother-in-law, who is further down the rabbit hole, who are, you know, objectively more awful people. I never bought that for a second because the movie doesn't believe it. And I'm not saying I didn't like the film because he didn't like the main character. That's a

nothing. I'm saying the filmmaker. and the actor don't seem to like him either and didn't seem interested in any kind of sincere way in creating him as a whole person with any kind of inner life because it believes that people like him are not human beings, which is a take, fine, but art is supposed to dig deeper to find the humanity. And I'm sure if you ask Aster or Phoenix,

they're going to say, oh, we found the humanity. That's what all his unhappy marriage and his despair and his haplessness is about. But all that is is a setup to turn him into a character that's as ridiculous and pathetic as he turns out to be, Dude, if this guy is not worth your time to create a believable human being, I guarantee you it's not worth my time. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned like Cohen Brothers and Doll. For me, the theme and the filmmaker I kept seeing sort of pop up in this.

And I don't know if it's intentional. I tried Googling, couldn't find any proof of him. Arias were talking about this directly. But I kept seeing Spike Lee and do the right thing in this film in very small ways. And I don't know if this is real. But when I think of, you know, the film opened actually with a sort of drifter, barefoot man who's muttering gibberish. She's played by Clifton Collins Jr. And he kind of reminds me of, you know, the character in Do the Right Thing, who everyone kind of like pushes it aside.

He's played by Roger Guadivir Smith. He has mental health issues. But like he kind of keeps popping up over and over in the first. film as sort of like this kind of outsider, but he observes everything. And that you have a moment where like a trash can is thrown through a window of a business. And there's like also just the way this all climaxes into, you know, the George Floyd of it all, I felt as though Ariasar was trying to do something like that where we have all these townspeople, all these eclectic people and how they all are connected in some way. But the difference between, you know, something like do the right thing and this

movie is the fact that like, Azure Stanglin, Spike Lee clearly likes and cares about all those characters. Even Sal, even Sal, the white Italian pizza store owner. Could I think of what Ariasso was doing here, especially with Michael, who I've already mentioned, who is, he's one of the officers who works with Joe. And he's the only black character in this movie, literally the only black character. And everything seems to happen to him. And everyone seems to talk at him and say, you know, you should be more about.

upset about this. You're a cop. Like, how do you feel about being cop? But we never actually see him, like, wrestling with that. We don't actually see him interacting with any other black people. And you can't just throw all of that onto this little black character and say, oh, look, see, I'm addressing this. When he doesn't feel like a whole person. He doesn't, like, he's doing a different problem of racism, which is just seeing him as, like, a symbol or, like, a vessel to, you know, project all of these ideas about anti-racism through and not as like a fully realized character. You guys are really nailing what I've always disliked about Ari Aster about hereditary and some of the two movies that you've mentioned.

He doesn't seem to like his characters ever. He treats them terribly. He has these remarkable performances, right? And hereditary, I get it and whatever. But that doesn't redeem the fact that his movies are kind of jerks. When we're comparing him to other directors and stuff, the director I always, think of as Billy Wilder. And you know, you compare it to do the right thing. And I see that. But I was thinking of one, two, three, the Billy Wilder film through the course of it, which everybody is commodified.

Everybody's used as a chip. There's a real cynicism about that film that mirrored 1961, the way that this, I think, mirrors 2025, this idea of real lack of empathy for anyone else is solsticism. But that kind of seeps through. I think the only Ariashtra movie I've liked without reservation, is his last one, but I was afraid. Ironically, he finally successfully had a main character that he didn't despise. I think that archness, that arrogance is what really has put me off of his horror films. You know, I felt like you want to make ordinary people. You don't want to make the exorcist.

To your point, you can say you can just doomscroll for two and a half hours and have the same feeling of illness afterwards, a lack of resolution. Totally true. I don't know why you would go to see this for that. No, the film I kept thinking of was not Spike Lee, not Billy Wilder. It was three billboards outside ofiving Missouri. Oh, God. I think I've memory-holded that movie.

Why? See, that is another film that took one look at the great psychological, socioeconomic, cultural wound on the American psyche that is race in America and thought, I got this. And then proceeded to deal with it in such a shallow and surface. way that it showed its entire ass. I think this film is doing the same thing. I'm glad you landed there. It was on the tip of my tongue. To be clear, I was not saying that do the right thing

in this movie or at all in the same league. I'm just saying I feel as though there's inspiration there. There's even a whole scene involving getting angry about music being too loud. I was like, okay, here we go. Of course, in this case, it's Katie Perry's firework, but like, you know,

it's not public enemy. He's got a point. Yeah. I mean, look, we've said a lot about, you know, what this movie is about and the themes. But, like, how do we feel about the performances at least? I, you know, we haven't even mentioned Emma Stone. She's playing Joaquin Phoenix's wife. And she's not a main character, but she's sort of part of the catalyst of the tension between the Pedro Pascal character and the Joaquin Phoenix character.

She is who a lot of people were or turned into during the pandemic, which is I'm just going to, you know, doomscroll and also go down this rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about COVID. And you have Austin Butler, who you've already mentioned Glenn, who's playing that grifter. I don't know. I always find it hard to judge performances in these types of movies that I deal are complete swings and misses. I don't know. I liked seeing Austin Butler be weird. It just felt like an actress workshop and a workshop of ideas. It's fine. But if you ever asked me to say, did you believe in Sheriff Joe Cross? Do you believe in Mayor Ted Garcia, no, I believe that I saw Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix working out, you know, social political issues on a stage shot handsomely by everybody's favorite,

you know, wealthy white guy, Ariaster, and hey, I just, I'm tired. I've seen that's a lot, you know, to your point with Michael, but also there's a Native American character, this indigenous cop played by William Bellew, who is able to see signs and finding things that no one else can find, you know, all of these really unhelpful stereotypes that these minority characters, the few minority characters, including even, you know, Pedro Pascal as Ted Garcia, they're forced to carry using, you know, Aisha's term, the burden of their entire heritage. And I think that's troubling. I just, are you the right mouthpiece for it?

Is Martin McDonough for three billboards the right, exactly the right person that talked to me about race in the United States? I just, I bristle a little bit. Please be less pedantic. You know, please be less sure. I think that's what, you know, our aster's always putting me off a little bit as like, why do you think you're smarter than me? You very well may be, but what Royals off of these pictures is a sense of superiority that I need his pictures.

I'm not sure that I do. Well, there we have it. Three billboards outside of Eddington. That's what she should call. Well, obviously we had a lot of thoughts, and there was even a lot we couldn't really get into for a fear of spoilers. But tell us what you think about this movie, Eddington. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH. And on letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR, pop culture.

We'll have a link to that in our episode description. And up next, What's Making Us Happy This Week. And now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, what's making us happy. Walter, kick us off. The third season of Strange New World, Star Trek. I adore this show. I've always loved Star Trek. I think some of the issues I've had with modern Star Trek is that every week is part of a longer story where the fate of the entire universe is in the brink.

And every decision is this giant decision. And I love, you know, there is a larger storyline of Strange New Worlds, but mostly it's a week by week, alien of the week, planet of the weak problem with the week that I just, I love it. I love this the same way that I loved Superman and there's a group of really capable people. I love watching this cast. You know, it's aspirational in a way that so much of our sci-fi is dystopian. It's just good people trying to do the right thing in hard situations. More of that, please. Here, here. All right. So that's Strange New World and Where Can Folks Find That? Season 3 is streaming on Paramount Plus, the first two episodes right now. Awesome. Thank you so much, Walter.

Glenn, what is making you happy? Florenzer by Phil Malanson is a new historical novel set in the city of Florence during the Renaissance, which was a big center for art and culture, and as is often the case, also for sex between men. The city had such a reputation for that that the German word for men who engage in homosexual acts was a Florenser, a man from Florence. So this book focuses on a young Leonardo da Vinci as he comes to terms with his talent. and what we would today call his queerness, but the author is really taking great pains to capture the history,

not just the stuff you'd expect, the politics of the Medici's and the papacy and all that. But really, the thing I most love about the book so far is the physicality of it, how it feels to walk the streets of Florence in different sections of it, the sights and sounds and smells, the immediacy of it.

I am only about a quarter of the way through this book, but I have it on very good authority that it gets, as the kids today says, pretty spicy. But right now I'm loving the pros. The vividness of this writing, what we used to say in grad school, the availability of this place and time

that is Florenzer by Phil Malanson. Thank you so much, Glenn. Well, what is making me happy this week is that, look, Song of the Summer, it's a futile exercise, especially this summer. And we might actually be, you know, talking about Song of Summer on the future episode.

But if I had to pick one right now, it would have to be shake it to the max. fly. It is the remix of Molly's Shaken to the Max. It is it's just a banger. I don't really know how else to say it. It is amazing. It makes me want to be in a club shaking it to the Max. And it features Jamaican rappers Shansia and Skilobang and producer

Silent Addy. Let's just have a little listening to that. You turn that up. It's great. It's fun. So that is Shake It to the Max Fly, the remix by Molly. And that is what's making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations,

sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show, Walter Chow, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. This was a pleasure, even if the movie itself was very distressing. Thank you. So happy to be here. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin, and Mike Katzv, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Khamen provides our theme music, and thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next week.