Tag: movie

A New Mexico Movie Review: Eddington

“Are you on Team Joe or Team Ted?” asked the person at the swag table after the Truth or Consequences premier screening of the movie, Eddington on July 10, 2025. I picked a “Ted Garcia for Mayor” button. Given the choice, I’d have voted for him over Sheriff Joe Cross, but I was really on a third team.

If this movie were a mystery, the person solving it would have been the Pueblo cop who wasn’t minding his own business, who was encroaching on the sheriff’s territory because a crime took place on the border between Sevilla County and San Lupe Pueblo. (Both fictitious locations, FYI.)  He would have been the protagonist. I was rooting for him as the person figuring it out, observing who is acting suspiciously, and what circumstances suggest that people aren’t telling the truth, but the story is not told as a mystery. He’s actually part of the Western movie tradition of conflict with Native Americans. He’s trouble for the sheriff.

Eddington is a modern dystopian Western. Or maybe an anti-Western, turning the genre on its head. It’s primarily in the points of view of the sheriff and the mayor, political rivals who have different visions for the town and its future, and they disagree about how to cope with COVID. The mayor is enforcing the strict approach to COVID taken in New Mexico in the spring of 2020: mask mandates, no large gatherings, keeping your six-foot distance, and limiting the number of customers inside stores at one time. However, the sheriff has asthma and hates wearing a mask. The trouble begins in T or C’s real grocery store, Bullock’s. Sheriff Joe Cross defies the mask mandate on behalf of an elderly man who says he can’t breathe in a mask. Cross  goes into the store unmasked and buys groceries for the guy. The sheriff can get away with it. He hands him the groceries and doesn’t ask him to repay, making him both a law breaker and a compassionate guy.

When you think of the sheriff in a western he’s usually a tough guy. Sometimes corrupt, sometimes heroic, but tough. This sheriff is too, in some ways, but unlike the stereotypical version of the role, he wears glasses, needs to carry his inhaler around, and has problems in his marriage. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant as Sheriff Joe Cross. (Perhaps getting out and about in T or C as much as he did helped him in his portrayal of the sheriff in a small New Mexico town.) Pedro Pascal’s portrayal of Mayor Ted Garcia is more restrained and equally powerful. Emma Stone plays the fragile and damaged Lou Cross, the sheriff’s wife, a new take on the Western trope of the woman with a past. Her conspiracy theorist mother is a 21st century addition to the genre cast of characters. The self-healing pseudo guru Lou and her mother follow is a new variation on the itinerant preacher and/or snake oil huckster of the old West.

Eddington also presents 21st century takes on the genre tropes of the bar fight, the stand-off, the big shootout, and the evil outsiders coming to town.

The conspiracy theory aspect of the pandemic is portrayed quite realistically, and the presence of phone and laptop screens gets appropriately oppressive. Toward the end, one of the secondary characters, a teenage boy, changes radically. His transformation is shown on a phone screen, as if the person he becomes exists only as seen through this medium.

One of the film’s themes is “you’re being manipulated.”  Notably, Joe Cross can’t spell it correctly; his campaign signs say “your being manipulated.”

Ari Aster, the director, was at the El Cortez theater to speak to the crew, who made up half the audience, about how wonderful they’d been to work with, and to tell the townspeople present how much he loved working in T or C. He seemed humble and not terribly comfortable speaking in public. I didn’t get a chance to talk with him after the movie, though some friends did. I would have liked to ask him how much the town influenced the final script. Did he see our water tower with Apaches on horseback painted on it and then decide that a scene on that hill would be perfect? I also wonder if Aster was inspired by our museum. When the sheriff crashes his way through it in extreme duress in the middle of the night, he’s scrambling through exhibits of the history of this area and coming out the actual exit, which is an old miner’s cabin. Rushing through the history of the West and coming out the other side.

Other strengths of the movie are the complexities of relationships, the absurdities of the political campaigns, the corruption, the deception, and the COVID realism. (I don’t know that this detail even shows in the movie, but they had signs on Bullock’s announcing toilet paper back in stock, with limit of a certain number per customer.)

Garcia’s bar, created for the movie in an old antique store long out of business, reopened for us after the screening, serving non-alcoholic drinks. There was a drone show out over the river, hundreds of drones lighting up with the logo of the production company A24, the name of the big bad tech company in the movie, and a 3D New Mexico Zia symbol accompanying the words Eddington, New Mexico. The town we will perhaps always be, at some level. Our Geronimo Springs Museum now has an Eddington Room, a permanent exhibit. I recommend the movie. It’s thought-provoking. Ambiguous. Ambitious. And it’s ours.

*****

For a look at the town when it was a film set, see my post from last year, None of These Places Are Real.

 

None of These Places are Real

I’m living in the middle of a movie set. As a writer, I find the experience fascinating, seeing how storytelling and setting are handled in film production, and also picking up inspirations for my own stories.

The streets on either side of where I live have been closed at times for filming. Most of downtown Truth or Consequences is playing the role of Eddington in a movie of that name, and the many buildings have temporary new fronts and even new interiors, like actors putting on costumes and make-up, getting into character. Tourists find it bewildering, not sure what’s real. Good thing we’re entering the off season. A commercial laundry is a gun shop. The Chamber of Commerce is a DWI program office. The sign on the Geronimo Springs Museum on Main Street is subtly changed to the Eddington Valley Museum, but otherwise the building looks the same as always. There are many more transformations. I won’t list them all, but you get the idea. Downtown is more Eddington than T or C for now. If a town could get an Oscar for best supporting actor, T or C would deserve it.

The street behind my apartment was closed a week ago for filming a scene of a protest march. Peering out my back window and between the buildings, I saw people with signs and heard them chanting and shouting slogans, heading up and down the street, doing the scene over and over.

Sometimes I can’t walk where I want to because of a scene is being filmed, but at other times I can freely explore and look into some of the windows. The ordinary becomes intriguing when it’s a work of art. I admired the perfect realism of the movie sheriff’s office in all its mundane practicality.

During the Saturday night Art Hop in May, townspeople could walk through one of the sets, where a former antique store on Foch Street is playing the role of Garcia’s Bar. (My photo shows the bar’s creation in progress.) Members of the movie crew were in there playing pool and having drinks. Not filming, just using the bar as a bar. I was intrigued by all the detail that’s not necessarily part of the plot but has to be included on a set. Because if it’s not there, the movie won’t feel authentic. Photographs of Truth or Consequences Miss Fiestas from prior years were displayed along one of the walls. If I were writing a scene set in a bar, I might only need to say “a small, dimly lit bar with a pool table.” I wouldn’t need to describe all the glasses and exactly what kind of beer signs or liquor brands were displayed. I probably wouldn’t need to mention the Miss Fiesta portraits unless a prior Miss Fiesta was part of the plot.

I have to highlight sensory information that tells the story, sets the mood, and which gets the attention of my point of view character, and then trust my readers to fill in the rest. A writer can—and should—include tastes, smells, temperatures, and textures, giving more internal depth to fiction than a film can offer. But a film can give you a hundred percent of the visuals. The mix of imagination and thoroughness on the part of the set crew is extraordinary.

The prolonged presence of this movie crew, living among us for March and most of May, reminds me I’d like I to write a book taking place during the making of a film. I thought of the idea years ago when a different movie came to town for just a few days, and I worked as an extra. The extras had a lot of down time together and developed relationships ranging from friendship to massive annoyance. I didn’t care to do such a job again and didn’t apply for Eddington. Walking half-way down the block over and over again for an entire morning was not exactly exciting. But it entertained a friend who watched me from the window of Ingo’s Art Cafe and waved every time I appeared. I can use the experience in a book along with this two-month immersion in a movie set.

The film company bought the town a beer twice, paying for free drinks at the Brewery for “Eddington social hours,” to thank us for enduring all the street closures and other inconveniences, such as simulated gunfire at night. The beer was generous, but residents are enjoying the strange experience more than they object to it. There hasn’t been a lot conflict or drama. In fiction, though, the potential for conflict is great. I’ve got at least two other books to write first, but I don’t think I’ll forget the idea.