🌴‘Eden’ Review: Ron Howard’s Historical ‘Thriller’ Strands Us on an Island With Characters Who Grow🌴

[Music] Eden review Ron Howard's historical  Thriller strands us on an island with characters   who grow Ron Howard has always taken pride  in being an Eclectic filmmaker in the last   40 years he has made movies about mermaids  cocoons Auto factories astronauts firefighters   newspapers beautiful mines cave Rescuers the  Grinch the D Vinci Code The Beatles and pavati   but at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of  his latest movie Eden he declared that the film   stands farther apart from his other work than  anything he has ever done he's right though not   for the reason he thinks Eden which is based  on events that unfolded 100 years ago on one   of the galpagos islands is a difficult movie to  characterize it's been labeled as a thriller but   I would describe it as a misanthropic survivalist  Robinson cruso meets who's Afraid of Virginia wolf   with deranged footnotes by Friedrich n for  Howard the film sure is different it has sex   murder and animal Slaughter yet there's another  word for it the word is terrible while there's   no denying that Howard has made the ultimate movie  not in his wheelhouse what's most different about   it isn't The Eccentric subject matter it's  that Howard got so immersed in the subject   so possessed by it so lost in it that he forgot  to do what he can usually do in his sleep tell a   relatable story from the outset we're nagged by  the question if the characters are historically   based and real then why do they feel so hopped up  and synthetic Jude LW who I just saw give what may   be the best performance of his career as an FBI  agent in the order here descends into hambone to   Tonic surliness as friederick Ritter a German  physician who has turned is back on society to   go to the isolated Green Island of floriana in the  southern part of Ecuador's Galapagos archipelago   it's 1929 and while the debacle of World War  I is long over the world has been plunged into   economic collapse Ritter believes that what lies  ahead is total Destruction of the old order with   the possibility that a new Utopia could be built  on top of it and he by God is going to be the one   to design it he's working with a Messianic fury on  a Manifesto that he sits at his typewriter all day   long pounding away at clack clack clack drawing  swaths of dark inspiration from n Ritter is trying   to imagine a new future but he already appears  to have given up the ghost of it his exhortations   are driven by a cynical Bluster a loss of faith in  mankind that seems to be the real reason that he's   abandoned Germany to live as a tropical hermit he  does have his wife with him Dora Vanessa Kirby and   together they carry on like a debauched Adam and  Eve she's there to support his Grand Vision but   the two fight even more than they fornicate and  what we feel watching them is that the ritters   are on a crusade that seems doomed because it's  nuts Friedrich is no n he comes off more like a   warped 1960s monomaniac who's done too many  drugs so what's at stake that's what Howard   and his screenwriter Noah pink never figured out  early on another couple show up and they're the   opposite of the ritters hin Whitmer Daniel  BR and his wife Margaret Sydney Sweeney have   come to floriana because they've been following  accounts of the ritters and want to join their   movement they brought along their son Harry  Jonathan tile because he has tuberculosis and   they couldn't afford to place him in a sanitarium  Maybe the island air will cure him you'd think a   communal theorist like Ritter would welcome these  disciples but no he just wants them to go away he   sets them up in the stone groto nearby explaining  how hard is to even get fresh water on the island   he doesn't exactly roll out the welcome shrub and  it's not as if there's some dramatic connection   between the two couples the interactions are  downbeat and disgruntled Howard has said that   he based Eden on two conflicting accounts of the  events it depicts and that's how it plays as a   film that never locates a point of identification  we're held at arms length observing the characters   as if they were part of an insect Colony we also  get to observe a lot of wildlife crabs wild pigs a   full frontal Jude Law then a mystery player shows  up yet another Island visitor though this one has   a very different agenda Anna Aras the charismatic  actress from knives and blonde plays aloise boset   the Wagner warhorn aka the baroness a party girl  fatal who arrives with a pel of men and with her   stated intention of building a luxury hotel on the  island is she serious is she really a baroness the   Aros plays her with a smile of ripe immorality  and an accent that makes her sound like meline   KH in Young Frankenstein she acts like she's in  a 30s Drawing Room comedy which is rather absurd   but for a while you can feel the movie come alive  when she's on screen the rest of the time it keeps   sinking into its sluggish morass of bad vibes  and even de armas's hotter starts to wear thin   Eden Lopez along without energy or purpose but  with a great deal of random showboating Sydney   Sweeney gets the film Center of radiant sanity  award her Margaret is humble and likable and   though she has to go through a childbirth  scene that's all but designed to make up   squirm you feel something for her yet as  the relationships slowly disintegrate and   the film begins to turn into some weirdly madcap  version of Lord of the Flies we're not sure how   to take in what we're seeing Howard should have  worked harder to ensure that the audience was   invested in these people from the beginning  he seems to assume that we'll just go along   for the ride but I can't imagine that there  will be much of an audience for Eden a movie   that makes you want to get off that Island and  go back to a place where the people are sane