Producers: Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Karen Lunder, Stuart Ford, William M. Connor and Patrick Newall Director: Ron Howard Screenplay: Noah Pink Cast: Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl, Sydney Sweeney, Toby Wallace, Felix Kammerer, Jonathan Tittel and Richard Roxburgh Distributor: Vertical
Grade: C
A bizarre episode that unfolded on Floreana, the southernmost of the Galapagos Islands, in the early 1930s is the inspiration behind Ron Howard’s fact-based film. The fate of three groups of people who descended on the previously uninhabited locale, though with different purposes in mind, was described by two of the participants, but since their accounts differ radically, screenwriter Noah Pink, who previously toyed with history in “Tetris,” has gone beyond them, making adjustments for dramatic effect and indulging in speculation where they’re insufficient or contradictory. The result is “Eden,” which smooths over the mysteries that remain in the so-called Galapagos affair and offers extreme melodramatics as dubious compensation.
The first European arrivals are Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his companion Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), in 1929. As described here, he’s a physician who believes that the world is crumbling, and seeks solitude to write his philosophical manifesto, of Nietzschean bent, about human nature. She’s a patient of his, a victim of multiple sclerosis encouraged by him to overcome her condition by sheer determination. They carve out a primitive homestead for themselves with a vegetable garden, some chickens, and a burro that becomes Dora’s pet.
They’re surprised when World War I veteran Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Brühl), having read reports about the Ritters in the German press, shows up with his young wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) and Harry (Jonathan Tittel), Heinz’s adolescent son from his first marriage, who suffers from tuberculosis; unable to afford treatment for the boy in Germany, Heinz hopes that he’d fare better in Floreana—as would he and Margret, freed from the rising fascist movement on the continent. Ritter and Strauch are far from welcoming, installing the newcomers in a cave and hoping they’ll soon abandon the idea of remaining.
But the worst is yet to come. An imperious femme fatale who styles herself as the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas) arrives with two lovers in tow—Robert Philippson (Toby Wallace) and Rudolph Lorenz (Felix Kammerer). (The latter eventually reveals the truth about her past–perhaps.) Using her considerable allure to keep the men in thrall, she announces her intent to build a hotel called Hacienda Paradiso on the island, and is willing to go to any lengths to support her extravagant lifestyle even in so unforgiving a place—indulging in theft and threats against the “neighbors,” even as Margret is at point of giving birth to Heinz’s second son.
Inevitably friction builds—it actually went on until 1934, though the period naturally feels compressed here—and ended with unexplained disappearances and deaths. As portrayed in the film, what happened wasn’t far from an adult version of “Lord of the Flies,” with everyone’s flaws, magnified over time, finally bubbling over into seething hatred and mayhem. There’s a relatively pacific interlude in a visit from Allan Hancock (Richard Roxburgh), a rich American businessman turned world explorer whose entourage includes a personal string quartet (they play Mahler, no less) and who’s smart enough to see through the baroness’ wiles.
The strangeness of this tale, even as refashioned by Pink (the 2013 documentary “The Galápagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,” by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, doesn’t resolve the tale neatly as he does), holds one’s attention to the end, but Howard’s treatment is tedious for long stretches before turning overwrought in the final stages, particularly in a couple of scenes edited hysterically by Matt Villa.
Two of the performances, moreover, border on the absurd. Law portrays Ritter as a preening Prussian whose arrogance and smug self-centeredness takes on a proto-Nazi feel. And de Armas is almost comical as a vampish diva who’s always perfectly coiffured and dressed to the nines despite the bleak environment. Wallace and Kammerer are nearly as bad, while Kirby and Sweeney are subdued merely by comparison. Only Brühl is at all convincing, something he achieves by underplaying. Shooting in Australia, cinematographer Mathias Herndl captures a suitably desolate look, and both Michelle McGahey’s production design and Kerry Thompson’s costumes are similarly evocative, even if the baroness’ supply of satin dresses strains credibility. Hans Zimmer’s score is appropriately spare.
As a result of the heavy-handedness of Pink, Howard and the cast, “Eden” turns a fascinating true-life mystery into something blunter and less ambiguous, as well as less interesting.