
As far as Ron Howard is concerned he has never been a studio type director, rabidly attached to just one genre. A cursory glance at his filmography reveals notable titles on mermaids, cocoons, car factories, astronauts, and firefighters, as well as newspaper tycoons, beautiful minds cave divers the Grinch or even Da Vinci and the Beatles with Pavarotti. At the Toronto Film Festival promoting his latest work Eden, he stated that there has never been a film in his professional career that set him so apart from the rest. He’s right though not in the way he believes.
Eden, which focuses on the events that took place on one of the Galapagos islands a century ago is a challenging film to define. It is referred to as a thriller, but I would classify it as a cynical depiction of, Robinson Crusoe living in antithesis to or rather in a fight with the world of naive love, surrounded by wisecracks from Nietzsche. For Howard, the film is right different and violent even with copious sexual death and animal violence. But there is actually another term used and that is ‘bloodcurdling. It is quite true that Howard has created the best film that can never be tagged as something that fits his genre, but what is so unusual about it? It is not the warped material. Rather it is that Howard became so the subject, so obsessed, so overwhelmed that he completely forgot what he usually does without thinking and that is to create a plot that one can relate to.
This might be the most important and confusing question that the film leaves us with. If the characters are real historical individuals then why do they all appear so artificially bizarre? Jude Law, whom I just saw play the best role of his life as an FBI Officer in the film called The Order, here sinks into two dimensional, garish hammy Teutonic whiner as Friedrich Ritter German physician who seeks solace in the lonely green island of Floreana in Galapagos islands, who looks down upon the rest of the society. The date is year 1929 and although the trauma of the First World War is long forgotten, the nation has been brought to its knees by the great depression. Ritter has a rather apocalyptic prophecy to reproduce. The old world is doomed, but the remnants of it can be salvaged to build an ideal world over it. And he will be the one to create it!
He has instead prided himself in working tirelessly on a revolutionary outline that he forces himself to work on each day (type pong sounds). He hears deep grays of inspiration from Nietzsche while he sketches. Ritter understands and is trying to visualize utopia but there’s no inspiration standpoint for it in his mind.
It comes from a violent ignorance that there is no hope for humanity; that might be the reason why he now chooses to live as a recluse. He does take his wife with him; Dora (Vanessa Kirby) and the two look like tizzy Adam and Eve. She is there to help him in executing his grand plans, but the two of them argue much more than they make love and what we get the impression from seeing them is that their aims are so unreasonable that the Ritters are in some impossible mission. Friedrich is definitely not a Nietzsche, He is more like a lunatic from the 1960s who had consumed too much psychotropic substances.
So what’s the point? This is also what was never understood by Howard and his scriptwriter, Noah Pink. In comes another couple with an opposite of Ritters. Thatcher’s Diary 1893, Dec 25th, Ethel’s Picket, Portland, the Neptune Society of the Sons of the American Republic. Mr. And Mrs. Heinz Wittmer have traveled to Floreana seeking to join the movement of the Ritters as they have been hearing about them. They brought their son Harry who had tuberculosis since they could not afford a sanatorium for him, hoping for a cure in the island weather. You would expect someone like Ritter who is a theorist of social communities to embrace these zealots on the contrary he wishes they wouldn’t even come. He relocates them to the local stone grotto, answering the questions regarding how difficult it really is to get ahold of such basic sustenance as water on the island. And that’s it no dancing flowers or awkward suspense to be found within the encounter of the two couples. The meetings are sad and full of resentment.
Howard has claimed that he drew inspiration for Eden from two contradictory narratives of events that it portrays, and that is how it plays. as a film that can’t seem to find a firm point of reference. We are kept at a distance watching the characters as one would watch members of an ant hill. A lot of animals are also given a view: crabs, wild boars, and a full frontal shot of Jude Law.
Then a mystery player shows up as another guest on the island but this one’s motives are rather suspicious. Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn, el barón WWII Weyburns, consumes the stage as delightful Kathleen, an utterly cavalier nurtured by the public dominantly in the works unfinished. She comes to entertain a room full of men who want to invest money and offers set up a beautiful hotel on the island. Is she for real? A baroness? De Armas is somewhat funny playing the character proclaiming to be focused on capitalism fan-fare and delivering the Madeleine Kahn blue accent reminiscent of the film Young Frankenstein. It is nonsense, of course, a place where she feels utterly alive as she plays it so intentionally over the top she looks like she’s in a 30s drawing room sophisticated comedy. The rest of the film constantly drags down into its swamp of unpleasantness and yes even de Armas’ protagonist coldness starts to be annoying after a while.
“Eden” lopes along, devoid of drama, fantasy, or speed limit, but abundance of needless and further annoying flaunting. Sydney Sweeney deserves a round of applause and the award The Shining spine of the movie for some claims. The Margaret she displays comes across as down to earth and sweet, even if she has to make through a vividly crafted childbirth which no doubt would make most blushing viewers disgusted she gets sympathy.
Time passes and as relationships become delirious and present themselves to us as a particular version of “Lord of the Flies,” we feel confused about what position to take in the face of what we see. Howard should have put more work into making us care about these people at first. It seems like he thinks there’s nothing we can do, we’ll just go with the flow. However, I don’t imagine there is much of an audience for “Eden,” which is a film that makes you want to return to madness in which there is some degree of reasonableness.
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