Jude Law Contributes Nothing But Full-Frontal Nudity in ‘Eden’

After a dismal debut one year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival and a universal refusal of commercial release by every major film company, Ron Howard finally decided to open his dreadful, independently produced and directed film Eden with his own money. Curiosity centers on one word: “Why?”

It’s a strange, creepy departure for Howard, who grew up in the movie business, from a cute kid on Andy Griffith’s TV sitcom and family-fit movies like The Courtship of Eddie’s Father to a mature, Oscar-winning director of box office hits such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. Like Steven Spielberg, his films are usually polished, coherent, and suitable for all ages. His obsession with Eden delivers none of those things, and it’s so vile, pretentious and confusing in style over substance that a lot of it is downright unwatchable. 

Set in the years after World War I when fascism was growing in fear and chaos, it centers on a small group of obnoxious German dissidents who denounce Hitler’s allegedly civilized society and withdraw to an ugly, barren volcanic island in the Galapagos called Floriana, led by an eccentric Teutonic doctor-philosopher named Friedrich Ritter (played to the neurotic hilt by Jude Law), who spends his days glued to a broken-down typewriter writing a book about the New Order. Ritter believes the only way to save the world is to destroy the old one and create a new one. He drags along his companion-bedmate Dora (Vanessa Kirby), who writhes and jerks her way through the agony of multiple sclerosis before eventually going stark raving insane.

Any warped would-be Nietzsche like Ritter is bound to attract supporters, so it’s just a matter of counting sheep before other followers and fans show up. Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Bruhl) and his wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) bring along a son with tuberculosis, thinking Ritter will welcome them, but he is hostile and hateful, warning them that life on Floreana is unsurvivable. (That doesn’t begin to cover it. There’s no fresh water, and food consists of muddy roots, dead animals and wild pigs.)

Next comes the loopy Baroness Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner Basquat (Ana de Armas) with her sexual threesome, phony accent and vicious dog Marquis de Sade. She eats only canned food, and plans to build a luxury resort hotel with whatever she can beg, borrow and steal. In what seems like an eternity, they all argue, vomit and resort to violent blows. While we watch them fall apart, Howard lays on the horror. Jude Law contributes nothing more than an abundance of full-frontal nudity because that’s what he does best in almost all of his films. There’s plenty of sex, disease and animal cruelty, while most of the cast dies from food poisoning after eating rotten chickens. But it’s really Sydney Sweeney who wins the top prize for unspeakable suffering in a long, unbearable sequence of natural childbirth without anesthesia while a pack of hungry, snarling dogs watch and wait, hoping to make a meal of the newborn placenta.

The deadly screenplay by Noah Pink brings to the assignment zero knowledge of form, craft or discipline. No character is developed seriously or deeply enough to reach more than the most superficial surface identity. Eden is supposed to be an adventurous examination of what happens when civilization breaks down and man’s true nature is revealed, but it comes off more like one of those boring, incomprehensible Wes Anderson films that they make up, scene by scene, as they go along.