Eden 2024 is very interesting in context

  Blender Dumbass
October 29, 2025

👁 4

https://blenderdumbass.org/do_login : 👁 1

#eden #ronhoward #anadearmas #SydneySweeney #JudeLaw #film #review #movies #cinemastodon

License:
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

In the summer of 2025 Sydney Sweeney made a controversial, seemingly Nazi-propaganda advertisement for a Jeans brand that claims that she "has great Jeans" ( which is a pun for "genes" ). Being a blue-eyed sexy blond woman, made the "genes" pun quickly interpreted as a endorsement of eugenics. And a lot of people on the conservative side equated her "huge tits" to the "death of wokeness". While people on the left decided to attribute her success with her sex appeal, almost accusing Sweeney with sleeping with executives, to become famous. And yet despite all this, Ron Howard's 2024 thriller Eden ( which is starring Sweeney ) has Ana de Armas at a role of this super-hot lady that sleeps with men to get what she wants.

Have you ever felt this feeling, learning about some new law, or some new creepy justification, to take people's freedom away, that you wish you could just go on an island somewhere, build there a little shack out of wood and live there, far away from the rest of the society, enjoying your privacy and your freedom to yourself, without anybody being able to take it from you? Well this is kind of premise of this movie.

We get our family. Heinz ( Daniel Brühl ), his young wife Margret ( Sydney Sweeney ) and his son from the first marriage Harry ( Jonathan Tittel ) that are trying to escape the rising political tensions inside of Germany in the early 20st century, by coming to a far away island, to try to live away from the civilization.

This is already interesting. The movie suggests that it was Margret's idea to escape, because she didn't like the rise of fascism. Margret, who is played by Sweeney. The same Sweeney that made that Jeans commercial. And then her husband in the film is played by Brühl. The same Brühl that played the Nazi "hero" from Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards. Same Quentin Tarantino that later also cast Sweeney as one of the Manson family teens in his Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood. And yet here both of them play the opposite roles. They hate fascism so much they literally go into the woods to live as far away from them as possible.

On that Island, though, they are not alone. A few years before they arrived, a doctor and philosopher Friedrich Ritter ( Jude Law ) and his wife / girlfriend / concubine Dore ( Vanessa Kirby ) arrived to that Island in order for him to be able to focus on a grandiose piece of philosophy that he was writing, that he believed would end the madness of the world.

Later, a third group arrives. Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn ( Ana de Armas ) and her 3 boyfriends / slaves arrive to try to create a hotel on the island.

We have 3 groups of people, forming something like 3 little factions, which allegorically represent 3 states. And then the little fights between those groups allegorically represent political tension and even war ( the film goes into murder, at one point ).

You could say that the first people on the Island, Dr. Ritter and Dore could be read as a representation of Palestinians. They are slightly vulgar. They are very ideological. But are sitting there, trying to live their own lives. And do their stuff. And Dr. Ritter's philosophy could be an allegory for the religious requirement in Islam to spread the believes around the world.

Then Margret, Heinz and Harry, that flee the fascism, could be allegorical of Israel. They arrive without much understanding of what they are doing. And they quickly make a rather surprisingly good looking garden and a pretty well made house. An allegory to the development of the land that Israel is so proud about. At first they are fighting each other. Dr. Ritter doesn't like anybody to be sharing a land with him. But then when the Baroness arrives, the dynamic changes.

At first, to avoid conflict, Margret tries to make friends with the Baroness. And the Baroness tries to make friends with Harry. Which means that the Baroness is USA. We go through some rather nasty geopolitical allegories. As the 3 groups start hating each other more and more. While pretending to be civilized. And in the end of the day it results in murder.

On the other hand, you could read it not as a political allegory about the middle east but instead as a movie about 3 types of feminism. And the 3 types of men, surrounding those women in the film. And this is where the movie starts to smell rather conservative to me.

We have the "free" couple in Dr. Ritter and Dore. They are not husband and wife and they don't have kids. She literally cannot have kids. So they can have as much free sex as they possibly can. Also they start the film as vegan. Which is interesting.

Then we have the nuclear family. It is Heinz and Margret and their son Harry. She even has a baby on the Island, which only gives Ronny Howard an excuse to show everybody the "wokeness ending" huge tits of Sydney Sweeney. She needs to feed the baby, right?

And we get the Baroness with her 3 boyfriends, representing literal abuse. And the Baroness herself with her absolutely obvious narcissism represents, probably, the "entitled woke feminists". Or something.

While the men, bicker with each other violently, the 3 women are scheming and smart about how they get what they need. Almost the entire movie becomes a sort of 3 sided game of chess. A game where the women are using their brain to get the man ( and the women in the other groups ) to do something that they want.

Also it doesn't help that all of that is apparently based on a true story that really happened. And all those people are actually real. So maybe Ron Howard wanted to explore the allegorical potential, but was sort of bound by the messiness of the true events.

Ronny Howard was in the industry since he was 2. Like literally since he was a little toddler. He was first acting in films as a kid. And then directing them as an adult. He has 69 years ( nice ) of experience when it comes to making movies. So he knows how to get what he wants to get.

This film is really tense. The tensions between the groups and above that all the danger itself of being on an island, is nearly horroresque. One scene in particular ( where Sweeney's character gives birth to a baby ) is straight up nightmare-inducing.

The script is ( as you can tell from my breakdown ) very freaking smart. Now... there is a problem with it. It has so many little nuances when it comes to the drama itself, that it leads to very little room to unfold gracefully. It is not a perfect movie. If you don't want to think, this is not a movie for you. And while you are thinking you are not getting some grandiose Christopher Nolan ideas. The movie kind of forces you to figure out the drama between the characters and how it effects everything and where it might potentially lead, going forward. There is some philosophical discussion. Specifically we observe an ideologue losing his ideology, due to the drama of the film. But there isn't something stupidly awe-inspiring about the ideas. In anything this movie is depressing. Like imagine a Lars Von Trier picture, but with more thinking.

I get why this movie barely made any fucking money in the box office. It is a tough watch even though it has Sweeney's tits and Ana de Armas. And even though we get to finally witness the beauty of Jude Law's penis hanging if front of de Armas while they are trying to have a casual conversation. It is a tough watch. It is a movie requiring you to focus a lot. And that is not something most people want to do.

Happy Hacking!!!

JSON Markdown

Help

Subscribe RSS

Author
Website

Share on Mastodon

Share

Help

You can comment from Mastodon.

Go

Post