Every year, we find filmmakers who immediately skyrocket to the public consciousness, either through their directorial debut or through making a film that quickly establishes them as essential new voices in the medium. All it takes to pique the audience’s curiosity is one good film – but I’m personally more interested in exploring how they maintain our attention. The true test of someone’s skills is not how well they start, but rather the extent to which they use their newfound acclaim and popularity as a springboard towards other projects. In the case of Ari Aster, it is quite clear that he is someone who is going to be sticking around as a true artistic force for years to come – and while many of us were compelled (and frankly beyond horrified) by his feature debut Hereditary, it was the works that came afterwards that truly consolidated him as someone to watch. Midsommar was a divisive but captivating work, and Beau Is Afraid is a postmodern masterpiece that will only be truly appreciated and understood in the future. Then there is Eddington, his most recent directorial outing, a film that is as compelling as it is deeply unsettling. The film is set in a fictional New Mexico town during the first few months of 2020, a notorious moment in global history – the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly spreading, Black Lives Matter protests were reaching an intensity after the brutal murder of George Floyd, and the United States were preparing for the upcoming presidential elections, which many viewed to be the most decisive in the country’s history. Witnessing all of these events is Joe Cross, the mild-mannered county sheriff who is caught between his own beliefs and the instructions of the politicians, who are asserting their own agenda, leading Joe to take on the incumbent in the impending mayoral elections. Daring, provocative and blisteringly funny, Eddington is a film that is designed to divide and unite in equal measure, a work of unmitigated brilliance by a director who has never felt impelled to explain anything to his audience.

Aster clearly has a fascination with allegory – his three previous films can all be considered very strong metaphors for a range of subjects, which are clearly underlined but never directly discussed in terms that remove the sheen of ambiguity. This changes with Eddington, which is a film that benefits from being quite frank and direct in how it presents the subject – rather than resorting to the same kind of ambiguity, such as fictionalising the real-world events that inspired the film, Aster chooses to name them directly – the pandemic is referred to as COVID-19, the victim of police brutality is directly called George Floyd and a range of real elements are cited throughout the film. This removes any sense of vagueness from a film that wished to express its unflinching anger at the state of America as it moved into the current decade, a period where division was the socio-cultural and political technique du jour for the entire country (if not the world as a whole), and where the lines between different ideologies had never been more insurmountable. Ultimately, Eddington is not a film that has anything to say in terms of offering a resolution or clever commentary, which is what we would normally expect from such a film. Instead, it’s a harrowing and deeply unsettling depiction of a country that sinks even further into chaos as we allow these divisions to not only grow, but also become too unwieldy. Aster walks a very narrow conceptual tightrope – his personal views are left out entirely, but he also doesn’t want to portray himself as completely neutral. Both sides of the political aisle are the subject of disdain, or rather the extremism that exists at both ends of the spectrum, at the target of this unsettling satire, with the director continuously highlighting the contradictions and hypocrisy emerging from both liberal and conservative views. It’s obvious that one is viewed as slightly more level-headed than the other (and strangely enough, that side is not the focus of the film), but there are no excuses made for either side, which is a tricky subject to get right – we recall the catastrophic “fine people on both sides” statement that still resounds as one of the most harrowing pieces of political propaganda of the 21st century – but which Aster approaches with a fearlessness that is nothing if not wholeheartedly ambitious.

Considering he has fashioned himself as a filmmaker who regularly peddles in the art of chaos and provocative, it makes sense that Aster would find a kindred spirit in Joaquin Phoenix, a phenomenal actor who has built his career out of challenging conventions and being a more daring presence, even if it occasionally leads to some divisive choices. There may come a time when we look at Beau Is Afraid as his best work, or at least one that encapsulated not only his comedic skills (both verbal and physical), but also allowed us to peer into the mind of an artist who has always used his skills to craft intense, enigmatic characters. His performance as Joe Cross in Eddington is nothing special at a glance – a relatively principled man who defines the simple-minded, unremarkable spirit of the average American conservative, who allows their close-minded nature to prevent them from ever seeing reason, despite building their beliefs on a platform of logic and facts. Phoenix is very funny – he may not get to engage in the same amount of slapstick as he did in his previous collaboration with the director, but he’s still fully engaged, delivering a strong and charismatic performance as this deeply unlikable character. He’s perfectly complemented by Pedro Pascal, whose grinning, smarmy liberal Ted Garcia is a great contrast, playing the embodiment of the tender, sensitive liberal who believe change can come about through words rather than actions, and whose focus is less on the core issues and more on creating an illusion of progress, something that has alienated even the most fervent of liberals. The two men are entirely in on the joke, but never aim for the low-hanging fruit, consistently working to create nuanced characters that may border on stereotype, but are still compelling in their own way. Emma Stone and Austin Butler have memorable supporting parts, the former being surprisingly underused as the conspiracy-obsessed wife of Phoenix’s character, the latter at his most beguiling as the repulsively charismatic cult leader who essentially casts a metaphorical spell over these characters at the threshold of the action-packed third act. Aster writes fascinating, complex characters, and his actors are more than willing to help him realise these abstract, strange individuals in extraordinarily compelling ways.

In addition to being very upfront and direct with the themes that inform the film, Aster is not interested in hiding behind allegorical filmmaking techniques. Eddington is an extremely straightforward film – there are no twists to be found anywhere, and while there is an illusion of a central mystery, this ultimately proves to be a non-sequitur, designed to throw us off the scene as the director gradually and methodically plunges us into a state of total, unbridled chaos. It’s a very complex work, and one that deliberately takes its time to reach a specific point, and ultimately proves to be deliberately quite banal, since it leads to a climax that is thrilling but deliberately pointless – extremely violent, filled with bleak imagery (some of which tends to be very disturbing) and a coda that does not answer any questions, just luxuriating in the knowledge that it has achieved something truly extraordinary, which is the complete dismantling of the American spirit. The filmmaking is quite simple, but has a quiet complexity that we find only further emphasises the primary themes beneath the surface of the film. Aster isn’t too focused on making Eddington an overly complex affair, and instead draws a lot of inspirations from classic western films – its as close to a tribute to those moral westerns that were so immensely popular that we’re going to get, both in terms of story structure (two adversaries decide to engage in a battle of wits before one of them has to meet a grisly end – but rather than the respectable spectacle of a duel, the person who dies is gunned down from a distance by someone too cowardly to address their rival directly) and how it looks, with the New Mexico landscape never looking so simultaneously arid and stunning as it did through the lens of Darius Khondji’s camera, which carefully and methodically captures every vibrant detail, piecing it together in favour of Aster’s utterly deranged perspective.

Four films in, we are finally ready to remove the title of wunderkind from Aster and instead replace it with clear confirmation that he’s profoundly talented, which is the exact reason Eddington works so exceptionally well. By this point, Aster has very little left to prove in terms of being taken seriously as an essential voice in contemporary cinema. He’s no longer the rambunctious upstart, but rather a fully-developed, brilliant director whose prospects excite us enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, even when making something as strange and off-putting as this film. More than anything else, we can view Eddington as a time capsule. It’s admirable that the director was willing to wait half a century to tell this story (although we’re only now starting to see films that directly address the COVID-19 pandemic emerging, since enough distance has elapsed that we don’t need to be enshrouded in layers of existential dread when seeing the subject discussed), but this time gave him the opportunity for reflection, and time to assemble something that is likely going to be seen as one of the most effective depictions of what life was like in the early 2020s, not only addressing the major cultural and political issues, but also the underlying tensions and the sense of panic that lingered over every aspect of your lives. It’s a fascinating departure from a director who emphasises his intentions to not restrict himself to only one genre – and in the process shows that he’s able to seamlessly step into others beyond horror, creating a film that is timely, shocking and absolutely exquisite. It’s certainly going to be an acquired taste, but everything that he has made has been done for viewers who can handle his offbeat sense of humour and penchant for the dark and twisted, which is obviously not for everyone, but will likely appeal to those who can see the value in his demented perspective and understand the roots that went into the creation of something so wonderfully dastardly, we don’t know whether to rejoice or retreat in horror at what we are witnessing.