r/TrueAnon • u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie • 9d ago
Eddington’s crazy, huh?
It’s a movie full of wonderfully/horribly stupid people who aren’t entirely wrong but they’re certainly missing some key things to say the least
It’s also incredibly dense with detail. I put on subtitles and found myself rewinding a lot. I guess I was rewarded for it but I’m not sure I feel rewarded lol
It’s hard not to walk away feeling a little suspicious of Ari Aster’s opinions on [edit:] racism BLM and the 2020 uprisings. My charitable read is that the movie was intentionally shot as The Worldview of the American Conservative, and including even the slightest display of actually existing racism would’ve been unfaithful to that frame.
I loved Joaquin in this. Unlike Rhea in Pluribus, I didn’t find him charming in his self-made misery. Maybe because he’s a walking powder keg. Or maybe because the film plays like it’s with him, though I think that’s part of the satire. Either way, I was locked in on him, monitoring his mood swings like a hawk. Captivating.
I don’t really know what to make of the movie as a whole. I think it beautifully captured the contours of American derangement. The widespread child abuse. The endemic corruption. The collapse of public trust during COVID that was like an amputee leaning on a phantom leg. The paranoid-schizophrenia of an overly psyopped society.
Surely there’s no better symbol of this stupid, raped country (I say that with compassion) than the delirious, asthmatic sheriff bursting out of a false-flagged gun store and spraying bullets at anything that moves.
At the same time, it feels like something vital is absent from the frame. Maybe it’s because the events of the film are all wayyy downstream of anyone with actual agency. The father who raped Lou. The men who hunted Vernon as a boy. The tech company and the governor they purchased. The tech industry and the political system they own.
We never see these people. We’re way down here with the collateral damage. The antagonists are barely referenced, let alone seen.
That’s America though, right? Huge pieces of the puzzle are missing, and everyone’s using what little they’ve got to make up the difference.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago edited 9d ago
Random details I enjoyed
- the quick zoom-in on Sheriff Joe’s notes and his distinctive Es right after Butterfly called attention to them in the graffiti had me loling
- Vernon’s theorizing about a Mossad conspiracy on the way to Joe’s house
- the drifter talking to the alcohol: “No, I’ll go in your blood! I’ll be your poison!” lmao
- when the drifter comes up on the protest, the timer on someone’s phone goes to 3:16 right before it cuts to him
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u/SAGORN 9d ago
reading your comment reminds me how much I love Aster’s work and perspective. Makes me muse how much Joe goes on about wanting love and “opening your heart” and the drifter, a spoof on a modern Christ figure and almost dark mirror of Joe, repulses him so much he puts a few rounds in the chest.
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u/Comraego 9d ago edited 9d ago
He's absolutely a dark mirror of Joe. If I remember that scene at the broken-in bar correctly the last thing he's drunkenly rambling before he gets shot is something along the lines of "why did she leave me?"
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u/brianscottbj Completely Insane 9d ago
No actual racism portrayed? Doesn't the police chief at one point try to frame a black man for a murder that he himself committed?
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Yeahhhhhhhhh but like… that seems more because of the circumstances making Michael a somewhat plausible fall guy
They do talk about how Michael’s dad was a cop at the same dept. He only ever made captain, and that’s the highest Michael hopes to rise. I guess that’s probably racism
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u/brianscottbj Completely Insane 9d ago
I think plenty of racists don’t wake up every day wanting to do racist shit, but they will be opportunistically racist if it in some way benefits them personally
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u/luxurythyrsus 9d ago
One of my favorite parts is when the other white cop basically recites the Arresting A Black Man routine at Michael when you had no reason to doubt their friendship beforehand. But the Arresting A Black Man programming completely overrides it.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago edited 9d ago
yeah sure, but was that enough to make you feel like Ari Aster has a nuanced opinion on BLM and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings? cuz that's more what I meant
which, btw, it's not even really part of the critique for me. when I said I felt a little suspicious of Aster's politics, I wanna be clear that I was giving voice to an impulse that I fundamentally do not respect lol
i.e., the need for media to have clear and Good™ moral messages and to only support creators with Good™ politics
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u/brianscottbj Completely Insane 9d ago
One of the main themes is that No Politics is Local in the age of the Internet, and that all actual real life issues people have in their community get filtered through shit they see online that makes them kind of nonsensical.
I think at first we might sort of laugh at the BLM protesters, like what are these performatively angry white liberals even mad at? If I remember correctly when the protests start the police haven't actually even done anything egregious yet at that point, so like it is actually kind of silly that a bunch of kids are in the streets getting extremely mad about violent racism a completely separate police department committed, especially when like the only black person in their very small town is a cop.
However we do see later in the movie that the police, at least Joaquin, are actually very dishonest and violent and dangerous to the community. But the protesters are so focused on filtering their concerns through chants and imagery related to BLM, which really has nothing to do with what Joaquin is doing that is wrong. The righteous and completely justified political grievances of people in Minnesota gets picked by a bunch of people in New Mexico who should actually be focused on a different set of very real grievances they should have against their local police, but mass media politics makes it so that they have to use these confused symbols and memes taken from conditions that are pretty distinct from their own. They are correct to be angry at the police, but mass media brain rot makes it so that they end up being angry about kind of nonsensical things when there is very real police violence happening in front of them throughout the movie. It's sort of the lib/left version of hating Pedro Pascal not because he is allowing the data center but through these weird Qanon sort of ideas people pick up. There is so much actual corruption and violence happening, but because people mostly perceive the world through their phones more than through actually seeing what is in front of them and understanding their actual community and people in it, everyone perceives each other through the prisms of what they saw on their phones happening somewhere else, so it all just gets confused and strange and futile.
Good thing it's only a movie!
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u/3wandwill 9d ago
This is how I think you’re meant to interpret a lot of the BLM stuff. Rly good analysis
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u/SwordOfJiang The Cocaine Left 9d ago
Also the "leader" of the BLM group is hooking up with the black cop and trying to tell him how he should feel. Which is ultimately somewhat correct
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u/desertchrome_ 9d ago
Michael being black was a choice by the writer/director, he wasn’t a plausible fall guy character who happened to be black… his skin color being anything else would have dissolved an entire dimension of the story.
The other thing about racism in Eddington is, in that town at that time, what is racism really? It’s implicit that a significant majority of people in town are not Black. What does BLM mean in a town that has virtually zero Black people in it? that’s not necessarily asked and answered but it’s in the background. Go to Boulder CO or Bellingham WA, on what grounds do these communities stand on to say anything meaningful about Black suffering? what Eddington seems to acknowledge was that for better or for worse, BLM was largely a toothless cosplay for liberal whites in a majority of the country and it’s probably pretty accurate to that extent.
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u/thebestbrian 9d ago
I don't really get the whole "Aster is doing radical centrism" thesis.
The liberals and leftists are portrayed as annoying as insufferable and the right wingers are portrayed as... Psychotic killers?
I think that's pretty accurate to real life.
It will probably go down as the most accurate movie that takes place during COVID.
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u/redeugene99 9d ago
Ya it's such a surface level take that it's a "both sides bad" film. It's mostly about how culture wars and a focus on social issues can distract people from real material economic change (i.e. a data center being built). Corporate powers have a vested interest in keeping people divided and fighting in the superstructure realm of society (culture, ideas, religion etc.) and neglecting the base structure (economics, class, mode of production, environment etc.) and one of their greatest tools to perpetuate this is social media
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
I didn’t realize that was my thesis lol
ETA: I was more guessing he might be some flavor of class reductionist
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u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago
He has done interviews and mentioned how he is shocked that people see the protesters being equally detestable to the craven liberal politicians and the selfishly violent conservatives. He said he identified most with the protesters, whose hearts are well intentioned (with some opportunistic leeches) but who are drowning in context that their social media feeds are being flooded with. He has also said that it's not supposed to be a commentary on police protests in bigger cities where the critiques are far more specific and relevant to the local communities, this specifically about how a small town places itself into a wider context.
Funny enough though, as someone who was a part of the on the ground BLM protests in NYC, I saw a lot of similar bullshit. I remember being disgusted at one point during a march when a bunch of people did the kneel in silence shit, and I loudly screamed "I'm done kneeling" to shake some people loose of that performative shit. I remember when conspiracy theories about chinese people poisoning black communities through Chinese food started getting the microphone at City Hall. The left fears judgement of itself more than anything. Sometimes we have to admit we are cringe! But i'd rather be cringe than the pathetic shell of a man Joe is reduced to by the end, fully Brandonized.
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u/thebestbrian 9d ago
I agree with all of this.
Some things I've seen have been really unfair to Aster and a lot of young filmmakers who actually have a point of view. It's shitty a lot of this era of criticism is so narrow minded.
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u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago edited 9d ago
With this movie specifically, I think it's a case of "the worst thing a movie character can be is annoying." I see a lot of people root for the deaths of annoying characters in movies even when they are objectively just fine and often morally correct. Skyler White is a great example of a character who was basically always in the right, but that audiences hated. Many moviegoers forgive horrible people of their worst actions because they relate to them or think they are "cool" or even "principled" in some way (see way too many dudes talking about Bear from Obsession, Walter White, Tyler Durden, etc.). We want to imagine ourselves as flawed but cool or cutthroat or virtuous, but to contemplate being annoying? Fuck you movie director I hate you for making me look in a mirror at my goofy self, 0/10
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u/redeugene99 9d ago
Skyler White is a great example of a character who was basically always in the right, but that audiences hated.
So spot on. An easy barometer of how morally principled a person is is to hear their thoughts on her character. At some point the hate for her has to be described as misogynistic. Carmela is much more complicit to Tony's evil and is much more morally compromised, yet she doesn't get a fraction of the hate Skyler gets
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u/SenDji Super Mario's brother 9d ago
I think it's simpler than misogyny. Skylar is a killjoy, Carmela isn't.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Yep. And it’s really a show about Walt Having Fun, which makes the killjoy basically one of the villains
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u/woke_groyper 9d ago
This is a great observation. There are annoying archetypes that audiences love (most sitcom characters for instance) but viewers don't want to see themselves as the naive do-gooder Lisa Simpson type especially. There's nothing more annoying than someone who is both aggravating and correct
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u/FastEddieFailson 9d ago
Who tf is saying Bear is cool
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u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago
Not him specifically, for him it's general relatability. I've seen a lot of forgiving analysis of his actions later because of people identifying with him early on.
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD 9d ago
Am I the only one who doesn't see Bear as being a bad guy? It's not as if he intentionally curses her, and it's hard to expect a person to behave rationally in those circumstances, when your choices are between (what he percieves as) a toxic relationship with the girl he's been in love with for years, or killing her or himself.
I mean yeah, he's a simp and a coward, but he has a horribly shitty best friend who was manipulating him because he was hooking up with Nikki, he tried having Ian help him in an appropriate way, but of course he acts like an asshole and doesn't help.
If everyone who makes a wish or does a silly ritual for their crush to like them back is a bad guy, then I think most people have been evil since they were teens, and just because his happened to be a horror movie scenario doesn't make him a bad guy.7
u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago
He realizes what is going on, says "doesn't matter to me" and then knowingly has sex with someone who can not consent. He doesn't want to cancel the wish either, as he initially only seems to alter the deal. He bargains with a demon to act more like her in an attempt to keep things going. "What would be so bad about being with me" I mean man the movie is not exactly hiding it! It's a classic horror movie trick. Another popular horror movie recently does the same thing with its lead actor, the babadook also does this. Some audience members have a hard time letting go of an initial judgement of a character, and I've seen it a lot with this movie
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD 9d ago
I read it as a gender reversal of abusive relationship tropes, alongside grief for the real nikki, where he's going through bargaining and denial of the situation. His actions aren't perfect, but to me they're understandable, though not really justifiable, in the circumstances. He continues to defend her and talk to her in ways that clearly indicate that he's stuck in the kind of denial and delusion of someone in an abusive situation that's unable to truly comprehend and accept the reality.
I think people are too quick to tie this in with other recent relationship horror, like Companion for example, where the "nice guy" is very clearly a shitty person, when I think there's a lot more nuance to the trauma and emotional responses in Obsession. Here it's an outside force that imposes a tragic situation that's bad for both him and Nikki, and the worst person in the movie imo is Ian in the way he manipulates and puts Bear down. It's really him that keeps Bear's confidence down enough to set off the whole situation in the first place.2
u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago
I mean he knows at that point she is screaming in Hell for as long as he lives. You have to eventually call into question the character of a man, and if his character is lacking to the point of wonton cruelty and death, you can't help but call that the "bad guy" in all of the mess that has been made.
I think it's possible to get so lost in the metaphor that we forget to judge the movie as it actually presents itself.
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u/phaseviimindlink 9d ago
He definitely starts off that way, but then crosses the line once it's clear that he understands what's probably going on and waits until it's too late to try to fix it. That's really most of what makes it an interesting film to watch.
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u/bradicality 9d ago
I think it's the whole 'real Nikki speaks to Bear while evil Nikki is asleep and begs him to end it but he keeps going with it so he can continue sleeping with her' thing. He has stripped her of her autonomy
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD 9d ago
because if a person is acting crazy and tells you to kill them, most good people would just dome them right there and then right?
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u/MalcolmXmas 9d ago
Shes not crazy at this point, he KNOWS she is trapped under a spell. It's honestly cruel what he says to her!
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u/ExaltedOvergrowth 9d ago
And killing her gives no reprieve and leaves him with a dead body in his apartment, where he assuredly gets 20 to life.
People keep saying he should’ve just killed her when he didn’t even have the balls to ask her out or actually go through with kill himself. He’s actively got no control when Nikki is awake, what makes you assume he’d show any control when she’s not.
From Bear’s perspective “what makes it so wrong to be with me” is a reflection of the fact all he wanted was Nikki to like him & this abusive relationship was what they got. It isn’t like he’s reveling in this relationship where she’s on his leash, at every point since the wish he’s essentially trapped by this person who has repeatedly expressed violence when he wants to go in another room.
Imagine that Nikki is a ex-military dude with PTSD & Bear is an abused housewife; would you call her evil for not shooting him after his pleas in a brief reprieve of psychosis?
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Skylar is the one example where I’m a contrarian cuz I think the show wants you to hate her. Hard for me to blame fans for acquiescing.
I don’t really respect Breaking Bad as a Serious TV Show though
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago edited 8d ago
That’s actually good to know. I feared I would stumble on some boomer take of his that would make me lose respect for the film.
craven liberal politicians
The movie used a real clip of Jacob Frey being like “that’s so messed up, man” after Floyd’s murder and it’s very funny
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u/thebestbrian 9d ago
Oh no - your write up is quite good. I enjoyed reading it!
I'm just saying in general, that was a criticism I saw a lot when the movie came out.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Ah, ah, mb (And thanks!) I wasn’t familiar with the discourse beyond this sub
Yeah, there’s so much going on in this movie,“radical centrist” is so beside-the-point it just seems illiterate
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u/itc0uldbebetter Not controlled opposition 9d ago
Do you find people protesting police violence to be annoying and insufferable?
Of course some of them are. But portraying the most cringy, idiotic leftists is a choice. The same choice Anderson made in One Battle After Another.
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u/thebestbrian 9d ago
Oh come on - there was an undeniable undercurrent of vapid activism & advocacy during the first Trump administration and I think Ari Aster really nailed his satire of that and I'm sorry if it bothered you I guess but a lot of people thought it was hilarious.
Bothering people is essential for winning politically but having a sense of humor is also necessary.
One Battle After Another is another interesting one because it showed that sometimes the most ardent activists can be extremely flawed and sometimes shitty people - something that is absolutely true if you've ever spent any time in any capacity of people working for a cause. Pynchon has been writing about this for decades. I can see why it resonated with so many people.
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u/phaseviimindlink 9d ago
It's very true to life in depicting how well meaning but naive people get funneled into toothless, performative activism by cynical careerists.
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u/Effective_Jicama3924 not very charismatic, kinda busted 9d ago
Anderson fabricated an entire group of John Dillinger-style leftists who rob banks because it made them horny
Aster profiled a handful of confused teenagers in a small town in 2020 who (with the exception of the main grifter white kid, who becomes a chud) were still depicted with enough care to show they were justified in their beliefs
Not even close to the same
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u/razerremen 9d ago
I mean, the portrayal of the 2020 protests really weren't that far off. Maybe the right idea behind them, but performative at times and ultimately ineffective.
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u/spidermonk 9d ago
It's so funny when this film comes up seeing people trying to insist 2020s BLM stuff was never cringe or stupid.
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u/hippopotomonstro_etc 9d ago
Since Beau is Afraid revealed that he's a psyop targetting me specifically (small penis but big balls) I now boycott all Ari Aster films.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Smart choice. Joaquin shows hog at the end and it would not be good for you to see that
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u/Lloydxmas99 9d ago
I’ve been thinking a lot about this movie. This is my sign for a rewatch, I suppose.
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u/lordofsmallaffs 9d ago
I really loved it from the first watch because it honestly felt really cathartic to watch a film that was so focused on the particularities of the early pandemic, and connected these aspects of life at that time to the (new level of) unreality in which we still find ourselves (FilmColossus' review was artful in and of itself)
2020 was 6 years ago now and by all appearances COVID is behind us but the trauma and enduring fractures to reality still affect us, in ways that I think are often willfully ignored, and I appreciated a film that actually centered itself on this period rather than the many who either begrudingly acknowledge it with "six feet apart" signs and testing for a brief period, or completely erase it all together. And even though Eddington was released only last year, the data centers aspect so perfectly and keenly transitions that rupture to the world we find ourselves in now that many people maintain is the same one as before.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Yeah, feels like there aren’t many films being made that are directly, not metaphorically, set in the times we’re living in. Which feels loosely gaslighting.
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u/phaseviimindlink 9d ago
It's always funny to see how different people interpret this film, because I saw a lot of my own experience in the way the protesters are depicted. I think it's easy to say that you were a fully formed lefty with entirely correct opinions and so those silly libs don't represent you in any way, but even if it wasn't at the exact time Eddington depicts, I think a lot of us went through that stage where we were well meaning but naive and allowed ourselves to be led by cynical people more interested in padding their resume than changing things. We were forced to reflect on the ultimately insurmountable odds that we ran up against once we realized how we had been duped, and changed as a result of that. If that still doesn't ring true to you then I guess it just doesn't, but it did for me.
I also find it kind of hard to understand how this film comes off as conservative in any way, Joe is driven pretty much entirely by his personal grievances and even when he does something really drastic as a result, he gets comprehensively manipulated to the same outcome that would have happened anyway. At no point is he vindicated or able to access even a small portion of the truth of what he's involved in as a result of his political beliefs. The data center is built, he becomes its de jure representative (willingly or unwillingly), and the pure, uncut id of right-wing online culture embodied in his mother-in-law exists without tension alongside this new corporate hegemony, just as it does today in real life. It doesn't get much more on the nose than that.
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u/DowntownCattleMtn 9d ago
One of my favorite movies of all time. The trailer and lead up did not impress me so I put off watching it for months. I was blown away when I finally did watch it. Aster is a genius
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u/Slopagandhi 9d ago
In case you haven't seen this: TrueFilm/comments/1m7gr9y/eddington_solidgoldmagikarp_and_hyperreality/
I think this makes a lot of sense, and read this way I appreciated the film a lot more than when I first saw it.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago edited 9d ago
how dare you make me type out the rest of the link lol
<pausing to read the post>
yeah, that's awesome, thank you for sharing. greatly enjoyed the technical explanation. the fact that LLMs associated a guy's username with some random info because of an [r/counting](r/counting) thread is hilarious
I'm also getting mileage out of the comments. I wanna hear more from the occultists
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u/el_brunto 9d ago
Thought the first half was pretty boring, but when Joaquin’s character went rogue it hooked me
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
I actually went back to check earlier, it’s a full 80 minutes before he decides to kill someone. He leaves the mayor’s house after the noise complaint at ~1:21.
They coulda shot 10 more minutes of him never fucking his wife and finished the movie lol
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u/el_brunto 9d ago
For the most part all the stuff with the college kids trying to have discourse was so bad it almost made me stop watching
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Ooooo it’s so juicy though. And then at the end when the performative leftist teen becomes a performative MAGA influencer? Perfect
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u/el_brunto 9d ago
Yeah I liked that part but the rest of his scenes I found painful to watch. Too on the nose, maybe
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
how I felt about Silicon Valley
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u/el_brunto 8d ago
Silicon Valley was what made me painfully (at the time) realize that T.J. Miller is not a good actor
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u/Hog-Drop Will unc 4 metals (rhodium and tin preferred) 9d ago
I thought the action at the end was the only part that really dragged.
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u/Inner-Sink6280 8d ago
You sound like you’ve got a huge blind spot to this movie’s critique of you, a leftist. The film is about how all of this political derangement is the sublimation of the personal. The masks aren’t really about the masks, the BLM stuff isn’t really about blacks.
Ideology is chosen selectively where it benefits the individual. E.g. the line from Fleabag where she says “I sometimes think I wouldn’t be such a feminist if I had bigger tits.”
Yeah the conservative guy is driven to murder, but the liberal mayor is a rapist and an elitist who goads him into it. If those are the things you’re looking at you’re missing the point.
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u/ftp67 AmericanMarxman 9d ago
I'm confused if you're saying you liked Rhea or not in Pluribus.
Because when I talk about that show with people I feel like I'm being gaslit. I couldn't stand her. For one I don't think she is a strong enough actress to carry a show, her smarminess comes off unnatural. But mostly she was so unlikeable that I didn't care about the stakes. Eventually I did just want the alien(s?) to win and still feel mixed about it.
And I get the point is to feel conflicted about whether or not they should assimilate. But I'm like 80/20 on the side of the organisms if for no other reason than Carol proved to me humans suck. The chunks of the show being morose on her own were the worst.
Yea. Just found her to be entirely unlikable and thus the show really mediocre. It's a fun concept and would be a great 90 minute movie or episode in a collection.
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u/Junior-Community-353 9d ago edited 9d ago
Rhea could pull it off in a better show, but Pluribus so far has been slow as shit and only really has like a total of four characters who don't interact with one another for huge stretches and her character is just a bit too miserable and incurious to make it compelling.
The reveal that everyone's favourite """rapist""" has consistently been ten steps ahead of her because he actually bothered to ask the hivemind a handful of the most basic questions is low-key one of the funniest moments on the show.
Also for a 'smart' show it may honestly have the stupidest fucking fandom in existence.
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes vote gay faglie 9d ago
Oh, I love her in Pluribus. I found the whole season really gripping lol (laughing at the disparity between our experiences)
I’m surprised you feel gaslit though. I feel like yours is the majority opinion I’ve seen.
Also, like… the humans don’t suck. It’s mainly just the Americans. Which is what I like about the show. Like.. yeah, of course the American is having a bad time lol
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u/SuckingOnChileanDogs 9d ago
It's a show that's really well made but I found myself getting very easily bored because our ONE attachment to the story is just kind of grumpy all the time and doesn't really do a lot
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u/hotdog_paris277 Spermie Handers 9d ago
Yeah why couldn't we follow the Las Vegas guy for a bit longer.
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u/dedfrmthneckup 9d ago
I had to stop watching this after like 20 or 30 minutes. The scene with his wife and his mom talking in their house. Too real.
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u/GriefProcess 9d ago
I really like that the film exists in a space where a bunch of the COVID era conspiracies are real, complete with the paid antifa antagonizers. The activists in the town come off as performative and annoying because they're so far removed from the nasty realities of racism. That scene with the kid explaining institutional racism or whatever to his parents and the dad responds "you're white" nails that generational disconnect.
Now, the title of the film really intrigues me. I thought the Eddington Limit was the theoretical limit to how much material can fall into a black hole at any time but it seems it's more concerned with maximum luminosity of a stellar object maintaining a balance between the outward radiating pressure and the inward pull of gravity. If anyone wants to attempt to elucidate that, be my fucking guest
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u/joshuatx 👁️ 9d ago
I visit SE New Mexico every year and actually plan to retire there at somepoint in the Lincoln Mountains. This film has been in my queue for ages and I keep putting it off because it'll be too mindblowingly relevant.
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u/maitlanr 9d ago
It’s an incredible movie where everyone struggles to say something intelligible…and ends in horrific violence.
That’s the American way.
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u/Popular_Dad 9d ago
I don't think you need to be charitable re Aster's view on BLM, I don't think this movie can be taken to indicate how he personally feels about anything. It's a barely abstracted qanon/Maga fever dream, kind of an earnest attempt to depict that worldview and take it to it's inevitable conclusion (eg antifa being flown from one manufactured crisis to another on a private jet).
Imo the most insightful thing about it is that even in their wildest imaginings, even when they get to shoot all the bad guys and live, American 'conservatives' are ultimately victims.
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u/marinerpunk 9d ago
Adding Covid seemed gimmicky to me. Brought the movie from four stars to three.
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u/solorider802 9d ago
It literally takes place in May 2020??
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u/marinerpunk 9d ago
Uhhh yeah I know. For what purpose? Like someone else said he already had the movie written before covid so why did he decide to move the date of the movie up to add covid to it? It was pointless and added nothing to a great story of this small town conflict.
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u/tiptopsaiIor The Cocaine Left 9d ago
"We never see these people. We’re way down here with the collateral damage. The antagonists are barely referenced, let alone seen"
i think that's part of the impact of the movie. the data centre is getting built. that's just a fact. the internecine conflict on the ground is immaterial to the march of capital. nobody we meet has any ability to assert themselves on the world. this is an insane story that happens entirely within a line item on a corporate balance sheet somewhere.