Eden
This had a lot going against it: Sydney Sweeney et al doing German accents, Ron Howard directing, Hans Zimmer. But very strong performances elevate this above mere survivalist gruel, it’s an actual feast.
During the Weimar Republic, a weird German philosopher (redundant, really, in any combination) recognises the future and attempts to save humanity from itself by syncretising Buddhism and Nihilism (again, “redundant”).
To fully live out that philosophy, he and his partner (not wife) convince the Ecuadorian governor to grant him a patch of land in an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. They are both fully bought in to a militant nihilism, exacerbated by the rise of Nazism, living away from civilisation to produce a text that is bound to paradigm shift humanity, just like The Bible did.
Their replies and articles start coming in soon, and our protagonist is not one to shy away from self-aggrandising publicity. Being German in the 20s, of course this involves free love, but they live alone, so faithfulness is physically enforced.
Word is spreading, including newspaper articles, books, word of mouth. The first true believers that arrive are the bureaucrat and the housewife. He’s a World War 1 veteran with a public servant job, but his son had TB and they can’t afford two years of vacation. So they sell everything and go to the island, based on newspaper clippings.
The newcomers are rudely received, with very much visible disdain, if not disgust, it goes beyond German hospitality. They are mocked, the great doctor tells him he wants to be alone, and they are shown the shittiest part of the island to colonise. But there is also more than it meets the eye: the kid is not her son, his mother died. She is much younger than her husband, and married him “because he asked”, which is emasculating to hear.
As they are settling in, another set of tourists arrive. She is apparently royalty, a Baroness of such and such, present with all the accoutrements matching that title. Her plan is to build an hotel, Hacienda Paradiso, but she only brings an engineer, a bodyguard, and an Ecuadorian manservant. They stay by the beach, but since there’s no water, they camp next to existing family.
The baroness introduces herself to them when she bathes in their collecting basin, soiling her own source of drinking water, and flaunting the attributes that lead her to this zany plan in the first place. Even then, the family is polite and cordial, unnervingly so.
Everyone seems to hate each other, but as long as the canned food lasts, they are friendly enough. Once that is not guaranteed, the struggles start.
At some point an American billionaire playboy shows up to film a motion picture to show how much has been accomplished is few years. He rejects the Baroness’s sleazy seduction, his resolve must be ironclad, or he’s in the closet.
What can I say, Sydney Sweeney does have good jeans, I have to admit she is more than just a pretty pair of … I mean, a pretty face. Takes a lot of charisma to put Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby in their corner.
The final “where are they now” words tell us Dore went back to Germany and died there in 43, suspiciously smack in the middle of the Third Reich, and she was the one complaining about traitors. Margret stayed there for ever and lived almost to 100!
I’m afraid to look it up and they are a bunch of esoteric Nazi occultists or something.
Of course, this was filmed in Australia, the only Galapagos shots are inserts of iguanas, sea lions, and crabs.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.