The 1930s tropical ‘utopia’ that became a living hell

When a group of European settlers built their homes on the uninhabited Galapagos Island, they wanted paradise. But instead, it turned into a nightmare – as the new film Eden, starring Jude Law and Ana de Armas, tells it.

“Modern Adam and Eve in Pacific Eden.” “The Mad Empress of the Garden of Eden.” “The insatiable barony who created a private paradise.” These real headlines and many such people were blown away in the mid-1930s, across European and American newspapers and magazines. However, the “private paradise” occupied by a small number of people on the otherwise uninhabited Galapagos Island became a place of deception, manipulation and, ultimately, mystical loss of the place. Ron Howard’s entertaining new film, Eden is a colorful character that includes this strange yet true story, with this strange yet true story, dramatic cheese, with this strange doctor philosopher, a full-fledged married couple, and a gorgeous pose that calls herself a baron. And then the eye-opening 2012 documentary, “The Galapagos Incident: Satan comes to Eden from filmmakers Dana Goldfein and Dan Geller.

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Eden begins with the phrase “inspired by the explanations of those who survived.” Obviously some of them weren’t. Howard told the BBC that, beyond the mystery plot, he saw real people as an interesting microcosm of humanity. “These people have given us this kind of fun and engaging research,” he says. “Inside it is suspense, betrayal and violence. There is tragedy, but there is humor and aristocracy. And it all happened in Darwin’s Galapagos.” Certainly, this setting is thematically appropriate – based on 19th century research in the Galapagos, Charles Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest may seem calm next to the deliberate human mischief of this group.

In life and film, their first arrival on Floana Island is Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law), who moved from Germany in 1929 with his girlfriend and Acolite Door Strauch (Vanessa Kirby). He had eccentricity. He extracted all his teeth. Because Door later had a “diet system that required an intensive chewing within each mouth” in her memoir.