Ari Aster's 'Eddington,' about America losing its mind in 2020, finds a mixed reception at Cannes

CANNES, France (AP) — Ari Aster's COVID-era Western “Eddington,” about a 2020 America quickly losing its mind to conspiracy theories, TikTok and political extremism, premiered to a mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a muddled, mistake-prone sheriff who runs for mayor in a fictional New Mexico town, was among the most feverishly awaited American films at Cannes. It marks the first time in competition at the French festival for Aster, the lauded director of “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid.”

It's also his most politically ambitious film.

“Eddington,” which A24 will release in July, plunges into the U.S. pandemic psyche, plotting a small-town feud that swells to encompass nationwide events, including mask mandates, the death of George Floyd and right-left divisions.

As a microcosm portrait of the United States, it's a hardly a more peaceful affair than “Midsommar.” When Joe Cross (Phoenix) tires of the mask ordinances of the town's mayor (Pedro Pascal), he decides to oppose him in the upcoming election.

Other pressures on Cross — Emma Stone plays his shut-in wife, who has a history with the mayor — gradually increase, driving “Eddington” toward a surreal and bloody eruption.

In Aster's dark satire, both MAGA Republicans and elitist Democrats get skewered, but the new, ominous data center just outside of town suggests a common social poison in the internet.

“Eddington,” predictably, proved divisive at Cannes. Some critics hailed it as an eerily accurate film about contemporary America, while others called it a tedious and wayward rumination.

After a not particularly enthusiastic stranding ovation, Aster himself seemed both proud and apologetic for what he had wrought.

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you think,” he said, smiling. Aster added: “I don’t know, sorry?”

On Saturday, Aster and the cast faced questions from journalists at a news conference that inevitably focused on how much the filmmakers felt “Eddington” was an accurate reflection of current times.

“I wrote this film in a state of fear and anxiety about the world, and I wanted to try to pull back and show what it feels like to live in a world where nobody can agree on what is real anymore,” Aster said. “The last 20 years, we’ve fallen into this age of hyper individualism."

“We’re on a dangerous road, and I feel like we’re living through an experiment that’s gone wrong,” Aster added. “I think people feel very powerless and very fearful.”

Pascal compared his director to a “mole” or “whistleblower” — “someone on the inside being like, ‘This is what’s happening.'”

Pascal, when asked about recent deportations in the U.S., was reluctant to speak. “It’s obviously very scary for an actor who participated in the movie to speak on issues like this."

“I want people to be safe and to be protected and I want very much to live on the right side of history. And I’m an immigrant," added Pascal. “My parents are refugees from Chile. I, myself, was a refugee. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the U.S.”

“If it weren’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened to us,” he said. "I stand by those protections always.”

Jake Coyle has covered the Cannes Film Festival since 2012. He’s seeing approximately 40 films at this year’s festival and reporting on what stands out.

For more coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival.

Joaquin Phoenix poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Pedro Pascal poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Emma Stone, from left, Pedro Pascal, director Ari Aster, Joaquin Phoenix and Austin Butler pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Joaquin Phoenix, from left, director Ari Aster and Pedro Pascal pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Joaquin Phoenix poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Emma Stone poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler, from left, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Clifton Collins Jr. poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler, from left, Emma Stone and Austin Butler pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Pedro Pascal, from left, director Ari Aster and Joaquin Phoenix pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Angelina Jolie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Angelina Jolie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Angelina Jolie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Natalie Portman poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Clifton Collins Jr., from left, Joaquin Phoenix, director Ari Aster, Austin Butler, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, producer Lars Knudsen, Micheal Ward, Amelie Hoeferle, Matt Gomez Hidaka and Cameron Mann pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Austin Butler, from left, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Clifton Collins Jr. poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Natalie Portman poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Angelina Jolie poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Joaquin Phoenix poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Cameron Mann, from left, Amelie Hoeferle, Micheal Ward, director Ari Aster, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Austin Butler and Clifton Collins Jr. pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Micheal Ward, from left, Joaquin Phoenix and director Ari Aster pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Austin Butler, from left, Emma Stone and Austin Butler pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Emma Stone, from left, Austin Butler, director Ari Aster, Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Eddington' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.

In the midst of a hantavirus outbreak that involves Americans and is making headlines around the world, the U.S. government's top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been uncharacteristically missing in action, according to a number of experts.

To President Donald Trump, "We seem to have things under very good control," as he told reporters Friday evening.

To experts, the situation aboard a cruise ship has not spiraled because, unlike COVID-19 or measles or the flu, hantavirus does not spread easily. It has been health experts in other countries, not the United States, who have been dealing primarily with the outbreak in the past week.

“The CDC is not even a player," said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I've never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

Health officials confirmed the deployment of a team to Spain's Canary Islands, where the ship was expected to arrive early Sunday local time, to meet the Americans onboard. They said a second team will go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska as part of a plan to evacuate American passengers from the ship to a quarantine center. Also, the CDC issued its first health alert to U.S. doctors, advising them of the possibility of imported cases.

The CDC's diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Early last month, a 70-year-old Dutch man developed a feverish illness on a cruise ship traveling from Argentina to Antarctica and some islands in the South Atlantic. He died less than a week later. More people became sick, including the man's wife and a German woman, who both died.

Hantavirus was first identified as a cause of sickness of one of the cases on May 2. The World Health Organization swung into action and by Monday was calling it an outbreak. About two dozen Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked last month and 17 who remained on board.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world's premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

The current situation comes after 16 tumultuous months during which the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO, has restricted CDC scientists from talking to international counterparts at times and embarked on a plan to build its own international public health network through one-on-one agreements with individual countries.

The administration has laid off thousands of CDC scientists and public health professionals, including members of the agency's ship sanitation program.

As this was playing out, Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was working to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”

The CDC has not been completely silent on hantavirus.

The agency on Wednesday issued a short statement that said the risk to the American public is “extremely low,” and described the U.S. government as “the world’s leader in global health security.”

Said Nuzzo: “Not only was that not helpful, it actually does damage because a core principle of public health communications is humility.”

The CDC's acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, posted a message on social media that the agency was lending its expertise in coordinating with other federal agencies and international authorities. Arizona officials this week said they learned from the CDC that one of the Americans who left the ship — a person with no symptoms and not considered contagious — had already returned to the state. WHO officials said the CDC has been sharing technical information.

The CDC also is “monitoring the health status and preparing medical support for all of the American passengers on the cruise,” Bhattacharya wrote.

But federal health officials have mostly been tight-lipped, declining interview requests.

In interviews this week, some experts made a comparison with a 2020 incident involving the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship docked in Japan that became the setting of one of the first large COVID-19 outbreaks outside of China.

The CDC sent personnel to the port, helped evacuate American passengers, ran quarantines, shared genetic data on the virus, coordinated with the WHO and Japan, held public briefings and rapidly published reports “that became the world’s reference data on cruise ship COVID transmission,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.

Some aspects of the international response to the Diamond Princess were criticized, and it did not halt the outbreak or stop COVID-19’s spread across the world. But some experts say it was not for the CDC's lack of trying.

“The CDC was right on top of it, very visible, very active in trying to manage and contain it,” Gostin said, while the agency's work now is delayed and subdued.

Instead of working with nearly all of the world's nations through the WHO, the Trump administration has pursued bilateral health agreements with individual nations for information sharing, public health support, and what it describes as “the introduction of innovative American technologies.” Roughly 30 agreements are currently in place.

That's not sufficient, Gostin said. “You can't possibly cover a global health crisis by doing one-on-one deals with countries here and there,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Darlene Superville in Washington and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)

Health workers in protective gear evacuate patients from the MV Hondius cruise ship into an ambulance at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Misper Apawu)

A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)