Tag Archives: Covid

455 – Eddington

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

Most film and TV has quietly agreed to pretend that the Covid pandemic never happened. Perhaps it’s too awkward to discuss it. Perhaps it’ll date your work. Writer-director Ari Aster doesn’t share these worries, telling a story about the days of lockdowns, mask mandates and conspiracy theories – days of particular hostility and division in the USA, in which individual freedom does constant battle with the greater good.

Eddington is an ambitious attempt at the state-of-the-nation film: a darkly comic thriller with wild tonal shifts, a mass of interwoven themes, uneven pacing, and an eventual climb out of reality into absurdity. José finds much to dislike, particularly its dismissive attitude towards the young people it depicts supporting the Black Lives Matter movement; Mike is surprised at how much he likes it, given how let down he felt by Hereditary. Eddington is certainly a mixed bag, but we’re glad to have seen it.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

274 – Citadel

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

John Smith’s 16-minute short, Citadel, gives voice to the City of London – Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s voice, specifically. Filmed during the first few months of lockdown in 2020, it builds an oppositional portrait of British life under Johnson’s blustery leadership – it’s Boris Johnson vs. the British people, and the City vs. the British people.

But in tying Johnson to the City, it ignores his shockingly unsympathetic stance, for a Tory leader, towards business – summed up succinctly in his overheard comment in June 2018: “Fuck business“. Late on, it depicts the British public as lambs to the slaughter as Johnson decrees they must return to work, but while Smith employs a soundtrack of outdoor construction, the homes he is able to show us are suggestive of the middle class, their inhabitants likely able to work from home.

Still, Smith only has so much to work with, stuck at home as he is, and Citadel is an evocative and concise film, cleverly conceived, shot, and edited. Its simplifications are small in comparison to the pleasures of its imagery, wit and tone. A treat.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.