A wigged-out modern western stuffed with ideas

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU HEARD the expression "The pandemic broke our brains"? Particularly in less densely populated parts of America, plenty of people still hold a grudge over the way life was shut down. In some places, mask wearing is still treated as a sign of wimpiness. And the "lost" years of Zoom education overshadow the reality that COVID19 killed a lot of people, and that some who survived still suffer. The pandemic is the global event we just can't let go, a scapegoat for people's anger over how and why their lives aren't exactly as they'd like.

- BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

How did we get here? That’s the question writer-director Ari Aster’s somber comedy-western Eddington appears to be asking. The story opens in late May 2020. It’s set in the (fictional) city of Eddington, N.M., where the local sheriff, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe Cross, tools around responding to minor crises. He adores his wife, Emma Stone’s emotionally fragile Louise, who whiles away her days making whimsically creepy dolls. Her overbearing mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) has moved in, a figurative suitcase of conspiracy theories in tow.