Ron Howard is a renowned US director who has made dozens of successful films, among them WILLOW, RUSH, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, APOLLO 13, THE DA VINCI CODE and the adaptation of the autobiography of current US Vice President James David (JD) Vance, HILLBILLY ELEGY: What does Howard want with the forgotten “Galapagos Affair,” in which German settlers died under unclear circumstances on the Galapagos island of Floreana in 1934 and three other people disappeared?

Howard uses text at the start of the film giving context with the financial crisis and rising fascism. Berlin doctor Friedrich Ritter (Jude law) and his partner with multiple sclerosis Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) migrate to the uninhabited island of Floreana in 1929. Ritter, a racist pseudo-prophet with a self-made esoteric dropout philosophy, sent articles about their “utopian” life to German papers. This inspired Cologne official Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Brühl) to migrate in 1932 with his wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) and their son Harry. The Wittmers succeeded in reclaiming the land at one of the two water sources on Floreana. In October 1932, „baroness” Eloise Wagner de Bousquet (Ana de Armas) and her two lovers Rudolf Lorenz and Robert “Bubi” Philippson met an Ecuadorian servant on the island, ostensibly with the plan to build a luxury hotel on Floreana. There were intense conflicts between both parties that ended in murder and manslaughter.

Howard’s film EDEN seems to view the Galapagos affair as a metaphor for US society. The party and the fake baroness make up the hedonist idlers, seducers, and thieves. The Wittmer family consist of diligent, nice, shy, hard-working people who want to create their own luck. Richter and Strauch are the grim, half-crazed ideologists who don’t want to have anything to do with the riffraff but betray their own philosophy.

What does this mean today? EDEN is reminiscent of the “cautionary tales,” the legends, fairy tales and stories you tell children so they don’t go off course and rock their chair. The docile Wittmers survive, the hedonists and ideologists go down. There are other ways of interpreting it in the different parties in the fractured society of the West. The ideologists and hedonists are always the others.

EDEN is a strange, very loopy film with a great cast. Even though the madness on the island is downplayed for the cinema – there’s little nudity, even though this was part of Richter’s utopia, Richter seemed to be much more brutal towards his partner Strauch, there was a lot more violence within the “Baroness” gang, the actors are all far too well-fed, Richter and Strauss had all their teeth pulled as a measure against tooth infections – EDEN is one of the most bizarre US films in a long time.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy