Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal Square Off in Ari Aster’s Brazenly Provocative Western Thriller, Set During the Pandemic the Film Says Made America Lose Its Mind
华金·菲尼克斯与佩德罗·帕斯卡在阿里·艾斯特公然挑衅的西部惊悚片中一决雌雄——背景设定于该片所称“让美国陷入疯狂”的特殊时期
It’s all too common today to see ambitious filmmakers turn their movies into “statements” that fit all too neatly into preset ideological boxes. But in “Eddington,” his teasingly audacious, bracingly outside-the-box cosmic sociological Western thriller, writer-director Ari Aster (“Beau Is Afraid,” “Midsommar”) gleefully tosses any hint of liberal art-house orthodoxy to the winds.
当今影坛，怀抱野心的创作者将作品强行塞入预设意识形态框架的现象屡见不鲜。但在阿里·艾斯特自编自导的《爱丁顿》中——这部融合宇宙社会学元素的西部惊悚片以戏谑而大胆的姿态突破类型窠臼——曾执导《博很恐惧》《仲夏夜惊魂》的鬼才导演，将艺术电影界奉为圭臬的自由派叙事法则彻底抛诸九霄云外。
The film is set in the desert city of Eddington, New Mexico, during the COVID summer of 2020, and the first indication that it’s going to offer a major tweak of conventional wisdom is that the protagonist, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), who’s the city sheriff, is just about the only person in town who refuses to wear a face mask. He’s an asthmatic, but he’s also got a brazen contempt for the COVID stats about transmission, and for the general notion of lockdown. Is his stance speaking for the movie’s? That’s tougher to pin down, since Joe, on the one hand, is the character we’re asked to identify with, but Phoenix plays him as a shambolic screw-up, earnest and benign but basically a walking mess.
故事背景设定在2020年特殊时期新墨西哥州的沙漠之城埃丁顿，首幕便显露出对主流叙事的颠覆：由华金·菲尼克斯饰演的镇警长乔·克罗斯，竟是全城唯一拒绝对面部采取防护措施之人。这位患有呼吸系统顽疾的执法者，不仅对流行病传播数据嗤之以鼻，更对当时推行的公共管理策略报以公然蔑视。其立场是否代表影片价值取向？答案暧昧难测——尽管乔被塑造成观众移情对象，但菲尼克斯将其演绎成行事乖张的失败者：真诚良善的表象下，本质是个一团混沌的行走矛盾体。
Not long into the film, the George Floyd murder occurs, and the protests that take place in Minneapolis and other American cities trigger a small local movement in Eddington of anti-racist youth. The film is unambiguous about portraying them as a pack of deluded narcissists whose conception of themselves exemplifies the very privilege they’re out to overthrow. Aster isn’t merely mocking them; his real point is that moralistic self-righteousness has become a kind of addiction in America. Nevertheless, that he kicks off his film by skewering COVID protocols, only to lampoon the radical-chic fervor of middle-class white kids, may make you wonder, for a moment, if Ari Aster has turned into some right-wing hipster auteur tossing cherry bombs attached to Fox News talking points.
随着剧情推进，乔治-弗洛伊德谋杀案的发生引发的全美社会运动波及埃丁顿，催生了当地反种族主义的小规模运动，影片毫不含糊地将他们描绘成一群自欺欺人的自恋狂——其身份认知恰恰印证着他们试图颠覆的特权结构。艾斯特的批判锋芒不仅停留在揶揄层面，更直指美国社会日益严重的道德优越感成瘾症。从开篇解构公共卫生应对机制，到嘲讽中产白人青年群体的先锋时尚狂热，这种左右开弓的叙事策略，甚至令人短暂怀疑艾斯特是否化身为携带特定媒体立场的右翼标新立异导演。
Actually, it’s not nearly so simple. In “Eddington,” Aster is dead serious about dramatizing what he views as the looking glass that America passed through during the pandemic era. He’s targeting that moment as The Great Crack-Up, the moment when the country lost its collective mind. But in the film there are many components to that, drawn from a wide cultural-ideological spectrum. The movie does show sympathy for the increasingly mainstream view that the sense of control that dominated the COVID years went too far. That Eddington, while larger than a small town — it’s a place of sprawling streets and buildings — appears to be all but abandoned is something that casts its own eerie spell; it stands in for a nation that’s been hollowed out, depleted, robbed of its hope for the future. When a teenage boy is chewed out by his father for having joined in a “gathering” (i.e., he met up with half a dozen of his friends in the park), we feel the creeping unreality of it.
事实上，事情并没有这么简单。在《爱丁顿》中，阿斯特非常认真地描绘了他眼中，在特殊时期美国经历的集体精神裂变。导演将彼时定义为"大崩裂"时刻——整个国家陷入群体性认知失调。影片通过多元文化光谱的拼贴达成这种解构：既流露出对"管控尺度是否越界"这一主流质疑的共情（埃丁顿这座街道纵横却宛若空城的沙漠都市，恰似被掏空内核、耗尽元气、丧失未来期许的国家隐喻），又以超现实笔触描绘日常荒诞。当一个十几岁的男孩因为参加了一次 “聚会”（即在公园里与他的六七个朋友聚会）而被他的父亲训斥时，我们感受到了令人毛骨悚然的不真实感。
But COVID is just the trigger. “Eddington,” while not a comedy, showcases an angry, sinister, and maybe crazy new America that it views with a deadpan tone of trepidatious glee. And the movie presents us with a fully scaled vision of that transformed society. As Aster presents it, what happened to America is about COVID and everything the relentless rules of the pandemic did to us. It’s about the rise of the new scolding moral absolutism. It’s about how conspiracy theory, which used to be the province of the liberal-left, became the new crackpot paradigm of Middle America, to the point that attacking the government for lies and coverups (like, you know, the plandemic) went from being a rebel stance to a kind of authoritarian reflex.
特殊时期不过是导火索。《爱丁顿》以非喜剧的冷面幽默，解剖着一个躁动、诡谲、几近癫狂的新美国图景。影片构建出社会转型期的完整病理切片：在艾斯特的镜头下，美国这个国家承受的不仅是特殊时期本身，更是防控机制带来的深层异化。这里见证着训诫式道德绝对主义的崛起，目睹阴谋论从自由派阵营的专利异化为中产阶级美国人的新疯狂范式——当质疑政府信息透明度从反抗姿态蜕变为某种威权条件反射（譬如特定流行病起源论），荒诞便完成了它的辩证法。
It’s also about the creeping paranoia of gun culture, and about the paranoia that has gathered around the all-too-real issue of pedophilia (a trend that actually started with the day-care abuse trials and missing-children milk cartons of the 1980s, then picked up contemporary steam with QAnon and Pizzagate). It’s about how social media became the dark hall of mirrors that magnified all these toxic forces, to the point that the distorting of reality almost seemed to be the buried reason for it all. And it’s about the ominous rise of big tech (embodied here by a massive proposed data center from a corporation called solidgoldmagikarp), which is both the orchestrator and beneficiary of that hall of mirrors.
影片更触及枪支文化中的妄想症，以及围绕未成年人权益保护议题衍生的社会性偏执（这种集体心理可追溯至上世纪八十年代托儿所诉讼案与失踪儿童牛奶盒寻人启事，在当代网络阴谋论助推下演变为新的道德恐慌）。社交媒体在此被呈现为暗黑镜厅——所有毒性力量在此折射放大，直至现实扭曲本身成为终极目的。而科技巨头的阴影（以虚拟企业"金鲤鱼"筹建巨型数据中心为隐喻）既是这场镜厅诡局的操盘手，亦是最终获利者。
That sounds like a lot for a movie to chew on, but “Eddington,” for all its heady themes, is a far more nimble and relatable entertainment than Aster’s last film, the masochistic surrealist art nightmare “Beau Is Afraid.” The new movie is two-and-a-half-hours long, and it ultimately does take a turn into something ominously out there. But for most of it Aster lures us in by telling a grounded and weirdly arresting story, which the age-of-the-pandemic themes sort of flow through.
尽管承载着如此庞杂的思辨负荷，《埃丁顿》却展现出比艾斯特前作《博很恐惧》——那部充满自虐倾向的超现实主义噩梦——更为灵动轻盈的娱乐性。这部两个半小时的作品虽最终滑向形而上的诡谲之境，但主体叙事始终扎根于怪诞却迷人的现实主义土壤。导演通过扎实的类型叙事引力场，让特殊时期的时代症候如暗河般在故事裂隙中自然流淌。
It all begins with Phoenix’s desperate, lackadaisical, borderline incompetent sheriff coming under fire for his anti-mask stance, then making the decision to challenge the city’s mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), with his posh backers and facile grin. Joe decides to run for mayor himself, but these two men have an enmity that reaches back to a buried personal scandal: Twenty years before, Garcia slept with Louise (Emma Stone) when she was 16 and got her pregnant. She had an abortion and went on to marry Joe. Joe and her are still together, living in an isolated ranch house atop a small mesa (along with Louise’s blustery mom, played by Deirdre O’Connell; she moved in during COVID). But Louise has a history of mental illness, and Emma Stone plays her as the image of frail, washed-out vulnerability.
故事始于菲尼克斯饰演的警长乔：这个因拒执防护令陷入舆论漩涡的失意者，以近乎自毁的姿态向佩德罗·帕斯卡饰演的市长泰德·加西亚发起挑战——后者带着精英支持者的倨傲假面，游走于权力场。当乔决意参选市长，尘封二十载的丑闻渐浮水面：加西亚曾与时年处于青少年期的露易丝（艾玛·斯通饰）发生关系致其怀孕，她流产后嫁给了乔。如今这对夫妻住在一个与世隔绝的小山丘上的牧场房子里（伴随特殊时期迁入的暴躁岳母，由迪尔德丽·奥康奈尔饰演），而斯通诠释的露易丝始终笼罩在苍白易碎的精神创伤阴云之下。
The marriage is hanging by a thread, and the thread gets cut when Austin Butler, acting with the smoothness of the young Johnny Depp, shows up as Vernon, who’s part of what appears to be a cult devoted to victims of child sexual abuse. Vernon sits in the Crosses’ kitchen and tells his story, a piece of retrieved memory that replaced his other memories, and it’s so garishly far out that we think: Is he about saving people or implanting them with new identities? More to the point: Is this what “salvation” is becoming in America? Louise, in thrall to Vernon’s therapeutic snake oil, has soon abandoned Joe, and this leaves him devastated.
这段摇摇欲坠的婚姻，在奥斯汀·巴特勒饰演的弗农登场后彻底崩解。这位带着约翰尼·德普早期慵懒邪气的神秘来客，似乎是一个专门针对儿童性虐待受害者的邪教组织的成员。当他在克罗斯家厨房讲述那段覆盖原生记忆的创伤回溯时，离奇程度令人脊背发凉：他到底是在拯救人们，还是在给他们植入新的身份？更深层的叩问在于——当下美国的"拯救"话语是否已然异化为这般扭曲形态？被弗农伪治疗话术蛊惑的露易丝最终弃乔而去，留下警长在精神废墟中独自沉沦。
Aster is out to capture how the dislocation of reality that’s becoming the coin of the realm isn’t just a political/media phenomenon; its tentacles reach right into the heart of intimate relationships. And we see the same sort of social-turned-emotional freakout when the Black Lives Matter movement hits Eddington. The film never doubts the validity of the protests that rose up against the murder of George Floyd. But it does satirize the performative aspects of a certain brand of middle-class radicalism, and the way that this ensares various members of the community, like Sarah (Amèlie Hoeferle), who becomes such a self-lacerating true believer that she starts to sound like a member of the Weather Underground; Brian (Cameron Mann), a local kid who starts out just wanting to flirt with Sarah, then finds his identity undergoing an extended mutation (with a real payoff at the end); and Michael (Micheal Ward), the Black cop who works for Joe and couldn’t be more of a straight-arrow, but winds up the victim of a group of terrorist extremists who are out to “save” him.
艾斯特力图捕捉现实错位如何从媒体场域渗透至亲密关系内核。当平权浪潮席卷埃丁顿时，我们目睹社会运动如何异化为情感层面的集体癔症。影片从未质疑乔治-弗洛伊德谋杀案所引发抗议的正当性，却犀利解构特定中产激进主义的表演性姿态——这种意识形态捕兽夹先后困住多位社区成员：从自我鞭笞近乎气象派组织成员的莎拉（阿梅莉·霍弗勒饰），到始于调情终于身份畸变的本地青年布莱恩（卡梅隆·曼饰，其异化过程在结局获得惊人闭环），再到恪尽职守却沦为极端主义团体"拯救"对象的黑人警探迈克尔（米歇尔·沃德饰），每个灵魂都成为时代精神病理学的鲜活标本。
There’s no question that in “Eddington” Art Aster makes himself a scalding provocateur, the same way Todd Field did in “Tár” when he staged the confrontation at Juilliard between Cate Blanchett’s Lydia and the BIPOC student who questioned her devotion to dead-white-male composers. Yet as much as nailing down the precise point-of-view of “Eddington” is destined to be the subject of numerous incendiary debates, I’d argue that this is very much not a case of Aster becoming some young A24-approved version of David Mamet. What he captures in “Eddington” is an entire society — left, right, and middle — spinning out of control, as it spins away from any sense of collective values.
毫无疑问，艾斯特在《埃丁顿》中将自己锻造成极具争议的挑衅者——正如托德·菲尔德在《塔尔》中安排凯特·布兰切特饰演的指挥家与某音乐学院少数族裔学生就"传统经典作曲家"展开对峙。虽然影片的终极立场必将引发激烈争议，但必须澄清：这绝非A24厂牌背书的大卫·马梅式剧作复刻。艾斯特真正捕捉到的，是整个社会系统（左翼、右翼与中间派）在集体价值共识崩解中的失控状态——就像离心机里飞散的粒子，彻底脱离任何向心力的掌控。
The movie is about the center not holding, and you feel that refracted through every pleading stammer of Phoenix’s alienated, sad-sack performance. It’s not quite up there with his great ones, but it’s not one of his mumbly showboat ones either. There’s a bitter poignance to Joe, who’s in way over his mussy-haired head. When he finally takes matters into his own hands, you keep rooting for him even as he does something indefensible. For a while, the film becomes a darkly ambling thriller, one that plays Joe’s investigative team off the efforts of a local Pueblo officer, Butterly Jimenez (William Belleau), who we suspect might turn out to be our hero’s version of Inspector Javert.
影片"中心失守"的主题在华金·菲尼克斯的表演裂隙中纤毫毕现：通过其塑造的警长那疏离的结巴、落魄的肢体语言，每个颤音都折射着秩序崩塌的微芒。虽未达其表演巅峰，却摒弃了过往炫技式的含混演绎。当这个被乱发遮蔽双眼的失败者最终选择铤而走险，观众仍会不自主地为他的背德抉择揪心——此刻叙事悄然蜕变为黑色游走式惊悚：警长调查组与原住民警官巴特利·希门尼斯（威廉·贝洛饰）的博弈，恍若《悲惨世界》沙威警长的当代变奏，在文明与蛮荒的接壤处投下道德悖论的阴影。
But just when you think you’ve got “Eddington” pinned down as a coherent and even conventional suspense tale, the movie wriggles out from under you and enters a terrain of stranger things. It doesn’t get lost in the grim funhouse of its own conceits, the way “Beau Is Afraid” did. But it does grow a little…abstract. There’s an indulgent side to Ari Aster, and though it’s more under control here, you can feel him giving him into it. Yet it’s also inseparable from what makes him, in “Eddington,” such a stimulating filmmaker. He wants to show us the really big picture, and while “Eddington” isn’t a horror movie, it puts its finger on a kind of madness you’ll recognize with a tremor.
正当观众自以为把握住《埃丁顿》作为传统悬疑片的叙事脉络时，影片却如沙漠响尾蛇般滑出掌控，遁入超验的异质空间。它没有像《博很恐惧》般沉溺于自我指涉的黑暗迷宫，却仍难掩某种...抽象化的创作惯性。这是阿里·艾斯特骨子里的作者印记——即便在此作中有所克制，我们仍能窥见其放任艺术触须恣意生长的瞬间。而正是这种危险的诗意，成就了《埃丁顿》令人战栗的当代启示录特质：虽非类型意义上的恐怖片，却精准按住了时代精神病灶的脉搏，那震颤将长久萦绕在观者的神经末梢。
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