The Commentary B-Side

Ari Aster is known for making you feel uncomfortable at the movie theater. While some directors are good at communicating the thrill of action or romance, Aster excels at making audiences anxious. That’s what makes “Eddington,” his political satire set during the anxiety-ridden spring of 2020, so great. Lately, it feels like we’re living in a world defined by the political fever pitch and social isolation caused by the pandemic. Aster’s take on the period provides creative and nuanced commentary — two things

Comments from Miles

Saying that “One Battle After Another” is not creative nor nuanced shows a lack of understanding for the film. It is creative and comedic in its exploration of the individual response to overwhelming authoritarianism. OBAA is nuanced in how it handles the characters of its story. The machinery of the government and the shady dealings of the white supremacist Christmas Adventurers Club are meant to be in the background and raise the tension of the movie as a whole, not be the political centerpiece of a film.

“One ‘Bullshit’ After Another” doesn’t succeed at — to do what art does best: help us understand the world we live in.

Comments from Miles

One of the things “Eddington” does that solidifies it as one of the best satires of the past few years is creatively tackling uniquely modern politics, primarily by exploring the relationship between social media, ideology and human irrationality. Aster describes his motivation behind the film in a podcast with Sam Fragoso. “I think people have lost the dimensions of the bigger world outside of themselves, and all they see are the dimensions of the smaller world that they believe in,” Aster said. “With ‘Eddington,’ I wanted to make a film that was about what happens when all these people who are living in different realities start to knock against each other — and a new logic comes out of that.” This makes for genuinely creative commentary that hasn’t yet been explored in depth through film in such an interdisciplinary way. There’s Joe Cross’ (Joaquin Phoenix) right-wing conspiratorial mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), who is overbearingly rigid in both ideology and personality, contrasted with Brian (Cameron Mann) and Sarah's (Amélie Hoeferle) performative and flimsy white savior social media activism. “Eddington” explores (and blurs) the lines between performance and authenticity by blending the digital sphere with reality: Does Joe Cross actually want to run for mayor, or is he compensating for his relationship insecurity via social media validation? Does Sarah actually care about social justice, or is she just looking for social acceptance by posting a black square on Instagram? Much like our current political situation, it is intentionally difficult to separate the fake digital sphere from reality. “One Battle After Another,” though, fails critically in this area of creative commentary. It uses the tired trope of white supremacism emerging from insecurities (see the 1998 “American History X” or even the 1972 “Deliverance”), depicting its weird relationship with the fetishization of minority communities, namely Black women. But, as film critic Brooke Obie puts it, by diminishing Black women to mere plot devices, director Paul Thomas Anderson fails to do anything positive with the subject matter.

Comments from Miles

While OBAA certainly does explore white supremacy, it is treated more as an undercurrent powering the repressive regime. It’s meant to satirize the relationship between white supremacy and the forces of power in society by putting it in such absurd focus that it cannot be ignored. OBAA’s “creative commentary” on society is more about the big levers of power within our institutions rather than the interpersonal strife that “Eddington” touches on. OBAA exaggerates and pokes fun at these powerful ideas that permeate our world, not necessarily offering a solution but, instead, drawing attention to and lampooning them.

“Anderson isn’t commenting on the white male fetishization of Black women, he’s directly participating in it,” Obie writes. “His camera leers at Taylor’s body just as Lockjaw does because the audience only sees her through the lens of the white men who fetishize her.” And, compared to other media that explore similar themes, it just feels flat. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” for example, talks about white supremacy arising from insecurity and how that relates to the co-opting and loss of Black culture. However, it explores the topic with much more nuance, covering what it means to interact with that systemically and how solidarity serves as a very real check to those forces. It also doesn’t rely on diminishing Black characters to make that point. And with race being one of the more overtly political topics in “One Battle After Another,” I just can’t see how people think this film is groundbreaking.

Comments from Miles

I disagree with this point to a certain extent. The film does seem to dance around the issue of race and certainly could have done more to explore the dynamics and impacts of race and racism on its characters. However, I think it is important to note that most of the film is from the perspective of white man like Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) or Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Their perspectives are flawed, important to the film, which is meant to be uncomfortable and imperfect.

The political themes are overdone (I am less shocked by white supremacists being in power since 2017 and more interested in how they are made) and explored worse than in other media.

Comments from Miles

I think that this is a reductive take on the film as a whole. It is not a film about the creation of white supremacists — look at something like “American History X” if that is what you are interested in. Instead, it looks at the responses of people against state violence. This is a common theme across political films, but few movies have the same balance of humor, brutality and honesty that OBAA offers. It does not offer solid solutions. Instead, it pries into what makes us tick and what can cause individuals to reject a system that will respond with violence. It is uncomfortable not to be served simple solutions or given an entire plot about how the big bad villain came to be, but that is the point. Individuals facing state violence do not know or need to know the motivations of those coming after them; they simply know that they are being threatened. OBAA does a great job of exploring this — it describes the present state of society rather than dealing with an already litigated past.

Another area where “Eddington” surpasses “One Battle After Another” is in delivering nuance in its characters’ ideologies and motivations.

Comments from Miles

This is more of an extension of Pynchon, the author of the book that the movie was based on, than PTA himself. PTA did a great job of expanding the characters to be more real and less cartoonish than Pynchon did in the novel “Vineland,” but some of that carried over. And, yes, the characters do feel slightly extreme and hyperreal at times.

Anderson reduces most of his characters to mere caricatures: DiCaprio plays the bum single father, Teyana Taylor plays the radical revolutionary, Sean Penn plays the fetishizing white supremacist. This makes them feel rigid, like they have little to no variation in terms of how they think or conceptualize the world around them.

Comments from Miles

I disagree with this; we can see change in the characters of Bob/Pat and Willa as they experience the traumatic events of the film. There is little introspection within the film, but that is mostly because there simply isn’t time, given the stress the characters face throughout the movie.

Contrast that with “Eddington,” where you see characters with more dimension: an emasculated sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) who feels increasingly alienated from his surroundings, a liberal mayor (Pedro Pascal) and corporate shill and a victim of childhood trauma, Louise (Emma Stone) who is exploited by those around her. The characters in “Eddington” resonate deeply with audiences because they feel like people you could meet in real life, making the dire message of “Eddington” so much more important.

Comments from Miles

Both “Eddington” and OBAA offer valuable messages to their viewers, some just prefer the ease of one message to the other. OBAA is a difficult film in its rejection of offering a truly final message or solution and that is certainly not for everyone. But it doesn’t make it worse.

Of course, there are things “Eddington” could have done better (Joe Cross’s ending arc), and there are also things which “One Battle After Another” did well (Benicio del Toro’s performance).

Comments from Miles

This is something Zhane and I agree on wholeheartedly. Sensei was amazing.

Aster’s movie is much more thought-provoking and relevant.

Comments from Miles

Again, this is a matter of opinion and what themes resonate with the viewer. Zhane and I will continue to disagree about this.

An interviewer described “Eddington” as a “Western, with phones instead of guns.” In an era where violent social media rhetoric leaks out to affect our political reality, that is symbolism we all need to reckon with.

‘Eddington’ says what ‘One Battle After Another’ cannot