Review: "Eden"

Eden is the latest film from Academy Award winning director Ron Howard.  Based on actual events, it is the story of three groups of people who want to escape the political and social strife happening in 1929 by moving to one of the legendary, uninhabited Galapagos Islands.

The tale begins with a young, German family, consisting of a father, Heinz (Daniel Brühl), his young, second wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) and Heinz’s son Harry (Jonathan Tittle) who is suffering from tuberculosis. Inspired by a doctor-turned-philosopher, known as Ritter (Jude Law), they sell everything they own to join him and start a new life that can bring them peace and health.

Ritter and his girlfriend Dore (Vanessa Kirby) are the sole inhabitants of the remote island, struggling to survive (drinking water is scarce, nasty insects are abundant) while Ritter writes a book intended to outline a new paradigm that can save humanity from the evils of corrupt politics and rising fascism.  They are not happy when Heinz and his family disrupt their solitude.

There is friction from the start, and things only get worse when an obnoxiously flamboyant young woman known as Baroness (Ana de Armas) arrives with her entourage.  Her plan is to turn the island into a getaway resort for the ultra-rich.  The egotistical Baroness considers herself the “embodiment of perfection.”   The ensuing clash with the island’s reclusive, idealistic occupants becomes the movie’s main dramatic storyline. 

The island represents the biblical concept of Eden for each of them, but their radically divergent intentions are in direct conflict with each other’s goals.  Despite lofty dreams of peace and prosperity, the darker side of human nature soon manifests itself, resulting in ugly greed, escalating hatred and sinister thoughts of cold-blooded murder.

Eden is a dark parable, reminiscent of classic novels like Lord of the Flies which was made into a remarkably good British movie back in 1963.  The tale of a plane full of schoolboys, who survive a plane crash on a tropical island and eventually regress into warring bands of murderous savages is a recurring message about who we really are as human beings—creatures who can quickly regress back to our most basic instincts when survival is at stake.

The characters in Eden predictably turn on each other as the story unfolds.  In that sense, it is a soap opera of scheming and backstabbing, that plays out like a disturbing, real-life episode of the TV series Survivor. The difference here is that the odds are truly all-or-nothing.  There is a real sense of heightened drama.

There is also a bit of Hollywood embellishment that makes the story seem a little far-fetched at times.  Like Mrs. Howell or Ginger Grant in the TV series Gilligan’s Island, Baroness never seems to run out of designer clothing or make up.  After being on the island for months, her hair often looks like she just stepped out of a Parisian salon.

Heinz is somehow about to single-handedly build a comfortable stone cottage up in the hills complete with furniture, fireplace, decorations, doors and plate glass windows, though none of these things were brought with them when they were dropped off on the beach.  It’s puzzling.

As mentioned, the story takes some very dark turns.  It’s a depressing two hours of pain and suffering. 

Howard sprinkles in some uncharacteristic sex and full-frontal male nudity for shock value, but the story coasts along on the suspense of wondering how it will all end.  You know it won’t end well.

In the post-end-credit scenes, Ron Howard serves up black and white documentary footage of the real characters the movie was based upon and offers a post-script of what actually became of everyone in the end.  No spoilers. 

Despite being grounded in reality, Eden is a familiar tale focusing on ugly truths about humanity and the observation that our primitive, deep-rooted survival instincts say more about us than our age-old, philosophical dreams of someday, somehow, achieving paradise here on Earth.  It may not be in our DNA.

Eden is rated R for sexual content, violence and nudity.