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 i.
