🎬 #220 The Conquest Of Paradise.
This week’s choice is a film I was intrigued by from the first images of the trailer.
I finally got to watch it in recent weeks. I unfortunately missed it in cinema, but finally caught it and enjoyed it and, simply, I hope you guys do too.
Please enjoy
Bry
FILM: EDEN
2025
Dir Ron Howard
2 hrs
What I like about Ron Howard's film is that it deals with a common theme or a common goal and how it can usually fall apart, succumbing to humanity's inertia, I suppose. The idea is that people move away from the world, as it were. They go to an isolated spot where they can start afresh, but in their quest to start fresh, they bring all the things that make us human and make them, them. All the good and the bad. When you even bring a few people together in a scenario like that, the worst parts of our nature can become revealed, especially in an isolated, harsh, and violent land like an island in the Galapagos. Gradually the environment can tear down our more civilised layers and the true animal nature can be revealed. This is the heart of Eden for me. A paradise that becomes spoiled, by our own nature. Even when the character's goals are to work towards the exact opposite.
The film is based on a wild, an utterly wild, true story with varying, conflicting accounts of what actually happened. If it wasn't true, you would find it over-the-top. But according to this source, it all happened largely as per the film. Ron Howard again is using his unique skills in bringing stories based on true events to the screen, as he did with Apollo 13, Thirteen Lives and In the Heart of the Sea. All of these films are about people up against nature in some ways, up against our own human nature in this case, as well as the nature that surrounds them on the island. He's got an adept hand at capturing those stories in a very emotionally honest way. But still heightened in the way the best filmmakers can, without making it feel dishonest. It's gripping even before the threads start to fray and the tides of descent creep up on the beach. Seek it out.