Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) is loathe to repeat anyone else, so when his writer’s block finds him spitting out quotes from bigger, better, far more well-known philosophers, he knows things are going badly. Things have, in fact, been going badly for a very long time, as is prone to happen when someone moves to an uninhabited island and attempts to carve out a new world order. Still, had Friedrich — a very real person — been a bit more comfortable with the idea of repeating someone else, he likely would have found plenty of comfort in Jean-Paul Sartre’s perpetually prescient observation that “Hell is other people.”
Such is the thrust of Ron Howard’s darkly funny “Eden,” a fact-based story that follows what happened after Friedrich and his partner Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby) moved to a Galapagos Island (Floreana, to be precise) after the end of World War I (and the start of all the stuff that would lead to World War II) in search of a very different way of living, only to find that they simply can’t shake the stuff that tends to make society so unbearable (read: other people). Frederich likes to act as if he’s above it all, but at a certain point, he started sending out missives to the outside world touting the paradise he and Dora have created, so they shouldn’t be so surprised when people start showing up, seeking a similar life.
Oh, but are they ever. Frederich’s dream is to, by his own admission, “save humanity,” but the furthest he got in that process was to move away from the entire world to bang away at his typewriter, dreaming up nonsense philosophy he’s completely (and hilariously) unable to live out himself. While he and Dora (who has MS, which they try to clear with meditation, sex, and hard living) have carved out a bit of a living on Floreana, it’s precarious by every measure. “Everything on this island can kill you” Dora tells their newest visitors, and it’s perhaps the most true thing anyone says throughout Noah Pink’s clever screenplay.
Those new visitors? The Wittmer family: father Heinz (Daniel Bruhl), second wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney, who gets one hell of a go-for-broke sequence in this film), and ill son Harry (Jonathan Tittel). The family has been enthralled by what they’ve read in the German papers of Friedrich and Dora’s adventures, and they want in. They show up in kicky little camp clothes, toting butterfly nets, starry-eyed at the whole affair. Friedrich and Dora promptly send them up the hill to a notoriously infertile slice of the island — Dora’s beloved burro helps, and that will be the last time that happens — and expect they’ll abandon the whole affair in weeks. They don’t.
Things are already feeling “Lord of the Flies”-y enough already, but with a distinctly adult bent and plenty of unexpected humor, and that’s before “Baroness” Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas, a scream in a cast filled with standout performances) shows up, all delusional big talk about building the world’s most luxurious hotel (for millionaires only!), most of it helped along mightily be her dedicated cadre of manservants and lovers (including Felix Kammerer and Toby Wallace). On an island filled with blinkered people (and that’s being generous), Eloise is queen. Well, that’s the plan.
As she starts pulling strings between her friends and neighbors — all of it both obvious and understandable, and truly entertaining enough that you’ll laugh out loud when Law proclaims “deus ex machina!” at a plot twist that is precisely that — Eden collapses. “Eden” does not. Howard and his stacked cast keep the entire thing chugging right along toward the inevitable, and even that doesn’t feel so expected, if only because of how damn funny this trip straight to Hell feels.
A certain amount of creative license helps — goodness knows, no one on Floreana looked quite this good as they were coming undone in increasingly dark manners — even as occasionally bloodless drama feels like a whiff. Listen, for a film in which Sydney Sweeney fights off a pack of feral dogs while giving birth by herself, things could (and maybe even should) feel a lot more fucked up than what we get in “Eden.”
But what we do get from Howard’s latest is a strong reminder of his handle on not just craft and casting, but also story and tone. No film about the utter demise of a supposed utopia — a real one, to boot! — and the utter infallibility of human beings should be this fun, but we’re lucky this one is. It helps the hard truths go down easier, especially about who we all are as people (you know, hellish).
Grade: B
“Eden” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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