‘Eden’ Review Ron Howard’s Historical ‘Thriller’ Strands Us On an Island with Characters Who Grow M

[Music] [Applause] [Music] 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 Minds C Rescuers the Grinch The Da Vinci Code The Beatles and pavara 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 Galapagos 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 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 Law 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 tonic surliness as Friedrich Ritter a German physician who has turned his back on society to go to the isolated Green Island of floriana in the southern part of Ecuador's Galapagos archipelago it's 192 9 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 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 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 Hines Whitmer Daniel Brule 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've brought along their son Harry Jonathan tile because he has tuberculosis and they couldn't afford to place him in a San Arium 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 Grotto 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 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 De armas the charismatic actress from knives out and blonde plays Eloise bosket de Wagner where horn 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 de armos 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 hter starts to wear thin Eden LZ 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 a 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 not sure how to take in what we seen 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