SPOILERS FOR EDDINGTON
Recently rewatched Eddington like a week ago, and was reminded of it when I saw the thumbnail for the new Jacob Geller video (which I have unfortunately not watched yet, maybe I'll update it when I see it), which is an edit of the shot of the kid running while shooting a gun with his right hand and recording video with his left.
I think there are a lot of valid criticism to be had for Eddington (I've seen some especially compelling ones with regards to its portrayal of disability, which is a theme in Aster's work), but I don't think any movie has as compellingly or as terrifyingly portrayed the past six years of American discourse as it did. Anybody claiming it to be meaningless provocation is being ridiculous. Eddington is a movie about how we have let screens dictate our lives, that we understand action and reaction solely through the camera lens, and that that was The Point of giving us cameras, that now we will become silhouettes, and all there is left are AI centers and McMansions and police stations.
And I think what makes it work as a takedown of cell phone culture is it is entirely internal. Aster clearly considers himself stuck in the madhouse with the rest of us, its portrayal of internet subculture is so lived-in. Immediately after the kid records himself killing the AI center people pretending to be antifa radicals, we see a montage of him fully delving into right-wing griftery. I had a pit in my stomach watching it the first time. It is easily one of the most horrific things I've ever seen in a movie. Another person getting swept up in the culture war, while they burn our planet to the ground around us. There is a whole lot you can hide outside the confines of a vertical video recording.
