Ali Astor and his Eddington The actor is unraveling the film's evaluation of the United States.
After the film’s premiere Friday night, the filmmaker attended Saturday’s Cannes press conference along with Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Micheal Ward and Luke Grimes.
The film, held in May 2020, is located in a fictional town in New Mexico, where local Sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) decides to compete with the charismatic and shared-minded mayor Ted Garcia (Pascal). As Joe's campaign intensifies, pandemic-era fanatics have also stimulated the flames of right-wing conspiracy, racial estimates and protests against police brutality following George Floyd's death.
“I write this movie with fear and anxiety about the world, and I want to try to back down and show how living in a world where no one can agree to the real one,” Astor said of the theme in Eddington. "We've entered this transpersonal era in the last 20 years... I wanted to make a movie about the American feeling at the time, and it made me feel sad. I was very worried. We need to re-engage each other. That's the only hope."
"We're on a dangerous road and I feel like we're living through a wrong experiment," he added. "It feels like there's no way out...I think people feel very incompetent and very scared."
Pascal said Aster felt like a "whistleblower" about what was going on in the United States, "I'm so used to looking at our footage from the outside because there are so many ways to see politics, sociology, our very, very complex culture, and Ari's movies, and our movies feel like we have a Moore, a Moore, a guy who calls out-the inside, what's it, what's the thing.
Pascal said in response to Trump's widespread repression and deportation of Latin American immigrants in the United States: "It's obviously very scary, and the actors who participated in this film would speak on issues like this. It's too scary to really solve this problem. I'm not getting enough attitude. I want people to be protected, and people I want to have one side of, I have a big impact on my life. Chile, I'm a refugee.
A reporter asked the group: "I have a film festival... We have some guests from other countries who are afraid to come to the United States. Even guests from Canada are afraid to come because Canadian universities send messages to professors about crossing the border from Canada to the United States.
Pascal responded, prompting applause: "Fear is the way they win. Keep telling stories and keep expressing themselves. People who try to scare you, fuck those people."
Stone and Pascal said Aster's script confirms their fear of their country and what you find online. "I feel like he wrote some of my worst fears, and he realized it in terms of lockdown experience," Pascal said. "The building is heading towards an unbounded sense of reality and then into a chapter, which becomes a point of no reward. It's like there's no turning back. I'm sure I'll be overwhelmed by that fear."
"The only thing that scares me a little in the (Internet's) algorithm system is researching something that hasn't used my algorithm in this movie, and unfortunately, add them to my algorithm because once you start searching for it, you start seeing more and more things."
Aster and his cast received a gentle reaction at the Friday night premiere of the A24 movie, with a 5-minute clapping for one of the festival's most anticipated movies. However, a tearful Joaquin Phoenix was applauded by the crowd of the Loomir Theatre.
"I don't know what to say. I don't know what to think," Astor said after the film was over, while also thanking all his collaborators. "I'm honored to be here. It's a dream come true." Then, he smiled and said, "I don't know. Sorry?"
Hollywood ReporterChief film critic David Rooney talks about Eddington In his comments: “In essence, the film is neither doubtful nor as it is.