Eddington's Americana Lunacy - Cannes Week 1
This is part one of my coverage of the Cannes Film Festival 2025. You can read part two here, or watch my video coverage on my channel. âExcuse me,â she said approaching our circle of critics cautiously. âAre you from the States?â (It was apparently the New Yorker tote that gave it away). She wanted to know what someone from the US thought of what we had just watchedâthe premiere of Ari Asterâs Eddington. The maximalist-panic-attack-reflection of COVID era insanity, which feels like a kind of deranged Americana, is riddled with the tiny details that make American life feel like an absurdist dark-comedy at times. I had wondered during the screening how the mostly European audience was perceiving the film, and now we were being asked as Americans for our perspective. The general consensus: It felt unfortunately real. Thatâs not to say Eddington, which premiered last night at the Cannes Film Festival and which comes out in the US in July, isnât over the top or surreal in ways. But I did find myself facing the uncomfortable reality that as absurd as movie the movies is, itâs not that unrealisticâat least not by the standards of the last 5 years in America. And that seems to be Ari Asterâs objective here (if he has one)âto hold a mirror up to American Absurdism and makes us all look at ourselves. The circle of critics I was standing in was somewhat split, many (myself among them) found a cathartic entertainment in this funhouse mirror but a few felt it lacked substance beyond that. Itâs certainly a film that will be no less polarizing as it reaches wider audiences, but how could a depiction of American life in 2020 not be? Isnât that part of the absurdity? That any depiction of our own recent reality polarizes us? Eddington was my seventh screening, capping off my fourth night at Cannes. Below youâll find my full review along with my recap of everything else I watched in the first week here of the Cannes Film Festival. Power struggles, whether theyâre against patriarchy or the state or within a society have been the pervasive theme within all the films Iâve seen at Cannes so far. When the movies have deviated from this theme itâs to instead face and confront death. All this to say itâs been a frolic. Perhaps these themes reflect the interests of the selection committee at Cannes, but I suspect just as much it reflects the current preoccupations of the artists making the films. Socially and globally weâre at a place of renewed destabilization. While things have never been perfect (far from it) some of the assumed promises of modernism, neoliberalism, and inevitable progress towards greater freedom are being forced into question. Much of the art cinema I see these days (not just at Cannes) feels like itâs grappling with these big questions, and trying to understand our place within this shifting landscape. Special Screening / dir Mstyslav Chernov / Ukraine I got into the fest and picked up my badge just in time to slip into a special screening of Mstyslav Chernovâs new documentary, 2000 Meters to Andriivka. His previous film, 20 Days in Mariupol (which won Best Documentary that year at the Oscars) is a harrowing and insightful documentary that covers the early days of Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine. The last time I was at Cannes in 2022, the invasion had just begun, so to return years later, and begin the fest with Chernovâs second film about the conflict, drives home just how protracted this war has been. His new film tracks a specific operation within Ukraineâs difficult 2023 counter-offensive, and it gives us a glimpse of modern warfare in a way no piece of media Iâve seen has before. It operate effectively on several levels: Itâs a harrowing depictions of the hellish intensity of combat. Evocative of Alex Garlandâs recent Warfareâbut instead as a documentary. As the film opens weâre immediately immersed within subjectively shot combat footage. Itâs the most intense capturing of real world combat Iâve ever seen and it is not for the faint of heart. There are several of these horrific combat sequences, stitched together from first person helmet cams worn by the soldiers, and they document a few battles in the protracted struggle to claim one 2000 meter strip of forest leading to the village of Andriivka. These sequences are broken up by Mystslavâs own journey following a group of soldiers through the region towards the end of the operation. What elevates 2000 Meters beyond just a visceral depiction of the reality of combat is the way Chernov position this operation as just one event within a conflict that has happening for thousands of years. 2000 Meters is not just a look at the fight to claim Andriivka, itâs a look at the nature of why men go to war and die over pieces of land. Some of the filmâs most moving and provocative sequences are actually when the viewer and the soldiers have a break from the combat. Hiding in fox holes while shells and gunfire explode around them, they connect with the filmmaker as humans, smoking, chatting about school, their families, or what theyâre going to do when theyâre get home from the front (if they do). Throughout, Chernov reflects on his own role in all this. Asking us to consider the role the camera plays in these conflicts. In his personal introduction to the film at Cannes he described the documentary as his way of carrying the flag for the soldiers from the film who lost their lives. Its a kind of raising of a banner that ultimately might be more symbolic than strategically meaningful in the grand scheme of the struggle. This documentary gives us a first hand account of a small piece of the latest military conflict in Europe since World War II, and beyond being politically relevant for understanding the nature of the ongoing invasion, I donât think Iâm exaggerating when I say it will likely find a place as one of the most significant war documentaries ever made. It should be recognized not just for its documentation of these events, but for what it has to reveal about the nature of war itself, and itâs excellence of craft as a documentary. If you think you can handle seeing real violence, it comes highly recommended. In Competition / dir Mascha Schilinski / Germany We get impressions of lifeâthe haunting moments where you awaken to your loneliness, the disconnect between yourself and reality, the places where there is a rift which one feels must be reconciled. There is curiosity about this, but also horror. These moments awaken in youth but are held in those with age. Around these moments lingers the specter of death, but they exist adjacent to an enveloping warmth. Sound of Falling, the second film from director Mascha Schilinski (only the first of her work that Iâve seen) is a multigenerational coming-of-age existential horror film, sewn through with sorrow and foreboding that lingers at the fringes before finally becoming a reality in the third act. Youâve heard of the male gaze. This is the death gaze. Iâm writing about it with this broken and disconnected language because that is how it presents itself, in fragments, initially disjointed; the characters, places and timelines seem at first connected only by a sort of haunted resonance. They come into clearer focus by the end, but as a first time viewer the connections still felt tenuous by as the credits rolled, perhaps more spiritual than chronological and causal. Itâs a beautiful film, conjuring images that feel as enchanted as often as they are disconcerting. Its structure and use of these imagery evokes Tarkovsky, while the atmospheric sound design is reminiscent of Lynch. As a technical piece of filmmaking this is was my favorite film so far, with each department working in concert to delivery a unique but aesthetically cohesive whole. Within this frame, oppression, sexual violence and awakening, objectification, unhappiness, depression, and ultimately, death and the realities that might draw someone towards it as an escape from those other things, areâŠ
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