"At least four settlers on the Galápagos island of Floreana vanished or died in the early nineteen-thirties, under circumstances that were contested long afterward among some of the survivors. A 2014 documentary, "The Galápagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden," gave the subjects' written accounts a scrupulous airing, letting the settlers tell their stories in their own often conflicting words. "Eden," which was written by Noah Pink ("Tetris"), begins in 1929, with the Great Depression in the background and drastic life-style reassessments under way."
"The new movie "Eden" features bursts of foul temper, wild sex, grisly violence, and nihilist ideology-a departure, you might say, for Ron Howard, a director whose cinematic disposition can be sunny to the point of sanitization. In a more literal sense, though, the film might be understood as only the latest of his departures to distant places and times."
Eden blends foul temper, wild sex, grisly violence and nihilist ideology with a fact-based survival narrative set nearly a century ago. The plot dramatizes contested disappearances of settlers on Floreana in the early 1930s and draws a throughline to Howard's earlier fact-based voyages to remote danger. A 2014 documentary presented the settlers' conflicting written accounts; the dramatization begins in 1929 amid the Great Depression and lifestyle reassessments. Floreana soon receives a ruggedly idealistic German couple, Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch, who have fled their previous lives to seek out a new existence on the island.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]