A-list director Ron Howard’s powerful, true tale of deviousness, set in the Galápagos Islands, is part ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and part ‘Lord of the Flies.’
R | 2h 9m | Drama, Survival Thriller, Biopic | 2025
“Eden” is getting a fair amount of critic-hate on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s an excellent movie. My guess is it’s for two reasons. First, they likely hate the fact that actress Sydney Sweeney successfully pulled off one of the best marketing campaigns in history for it. Second, director Ron Howard is trying to pull a Steven-Spielberg-directs-“Schindler’s List”-style artistic coup. How dare he.
Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ads have sent the entire woke world into a tizzy, since, in the words of Justin Timberlake, they’re “bringing sexy back.” With the wordplay on “jeans” and “genes,” the left is screaming eugenics. By not demanding viewers pretend the emperor is wearing clothes, or that multi-colored-haired, morbidly obese people will sell even $20 worth of jeans, American Eagle proved the opposite of “go woke, go broke.” They sold roughly $400 million worth of jeans in a single day.
As for Ron Howard, how dare the man who made “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Splash,” and “Cocoon,” try his hand at something as serious as “Eden”? They object although he’s already served up this sort of fare in “A Beautiful Mind,” and “Apollo 13.” It appears to be a case of the proverbial crab-bucket.
‘Eden’
The 71-year-old Ron Howard is best known for his successful transition from child actor, famously playing Opie Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show” and Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days” (not to mention Steve Bolander in “American Grafitti”) to a highly acclaimed film director and producer with an extensive, diverse, and well-feted body of work. In a remarkable departure for Howard, “Eden” is a bold, ambitious, stirring, brutal, and bleak look at human nature. Think “Lord of the Flies” meets “Robinson Crusoe.”
Set in the early 1930s and based on real characters and events, “Eden” tells the story of a passel of societal fringe-dwellers who seek to escape Third Reich fascism. It’s a Darwinian tale of survival of the fittest. Ironically, the events take place on Floreana, one of the more desolate and remote of the Galápagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador—the exact location where Charles Darwin came up with the theories for his book, “On the Origin of Species.” (The movie was actually filmed in Australia).
An aside: Karl Marx scoffed at Darwin’s hypothesis, but also considered humanity too stupid to understand it, and therefore happily borrowed its theories to undergird “The Communist Manifesto” and assist in its inherent moral subterfuge.
The Darwinian tale told in “Eden” depicts humanity attempting to do its best, but ultimately spiraling into its worst. With humans, survival of the fittest can also sometimes mean survival of the most conniving, intentionally cruel, hateful, and deceitful.
Speaking of Crab Buckets
The enigmatic, charismatic, and notorious Dr. Frederick Ritter (1898–1989), played by Jude Law, is a German botanist known for his extensive studies of cacti. He and his wife, Dore Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), have fled the Fatherland of Hitler’s Aryan utopian vision. They have settled on Floreana to create their very own utopia.
A self-appointed philosopher, Ritter advocated for a “purely subjective existence,” fleeing the “beaten paths of man” to seek solitude and communion with nature. He believed paradise is not a place but “only a state of the soul within one’s self” attained through love, patience, and contentment. He was also influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophy, particularly the idea of the “Superman.” Ritter is paradoxically misanthropic but also attention-seeking, making sure the selections from the world-changing philosophical tome he’s writing reach the international press.
Strauch suffers from multiple sclerosis but is determined to please her stoic partner by ridding herself of it via meditation and mindful sex.
Meanwhile, back in Germany, 41-year-old Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Brühl), the personal secretary to the mayor of Cologne, is discouraged by the grim economic and political realities. He’s also concerned about the fragile health of his 14-year-old son Harry (Jonathan Tittel). Wittmer reads a series of newspaper articles written by Ritter, becomes inspired, and he, his wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney), and son soon arrive on Floreana.
They aren’t welcome. Ritter and Strauch see them as attention-needy pests and do all they can to sabotage the naïve new homesteaders.
The Baroness
The Wittmers have barely settled, overcome insanity-inducing mosquito swarms and rigged split-bamboo stalks as mini-aqueducts to maximize the potential of the one tiny spring near their dug-out cave, when the infinitely supercilious and condescending Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas) arrives. Upon exiting their beached boat, her entourage of two young men immediately sets up a phonograph to play operatic arias for her enjoyment and hold a sun umbrella over her.
The Baroness has plans. She’s going to construct a luxury hotel along the seashore. That is, the two men will do the work, while she dallies with either.
All it takes is for the Baroness’s store of canned goods to start running low before the morality and ethics of every individual on the island start to plummet alarmingly. Manipulation, sabotage, lying, and filching rule the day. Multiple nail-biting conflicts and terrors ensue, including when one character births her baby alone while fighting off a pack of wild dogs.
Overall
The screenplay is based on the real-life survivors’ accounts. Who ends up surviving and who gets thrown off a seaside cliff is one of the many beguiling aspects of this you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up saga.
The cast is outstanding, anchored by three powerhouse female lead performances. Vanessa Kirby manages to imbue a harsh and selfish character with surprisingly sympathetic qualities.
Sydney Sweeney makes good on her American Eagle internet-breaking brouhaha by smacking down an Oscar-worthy performance that may transform her entire career. Sans make-up, completely immersed in her character’s German accent, and practically unrecognizable, she’s decisively stepping out of young starlet territory and into serious leading-lady roles. It’s still her niche though—Sweeney starts off as a meek hausfrau who’s tempered by so many betrayals that she eventually morphs into the cold-eyed, steely, self-confident, smarter-than-you-thought character of the Sweeney-wheelhouse.
Ana De Armas has a campy, catty, scenery-chewing flounce-fest, playing the faux high-society femme fatale who fiendishly flummoxes the menfolk. A vicious survivor down to her molecules, she’s deliciously devious and destructive and yet, frighteningly, not a cartoon.
The men are also quite good, with Jude Law depicting a would-be philosopher whose morality is completely disconnected from his lofty ideals. Brühl, more subtle as a battle-scarred World War I vet trying desperately to change his fortune, fights tooth and nail against the moral erosion taking place on the island.
With “Eden,” Howard has crafted his darkest and most haunting cinematic magnum opus.
Vertical will release Eden in theaters Aug. 22, 2025.
‘Eden’ Director: Ron Howard Starring: Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Ana De Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 2 hours, 9 minutes Release Date: Aug. 22, 2025 Rating: 4 stars out of 5
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