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The “Galapagos Affair”, as it came to be known over the years, has captured the imaginations of writers and filmmakers for decades, from the original hearsay reports in the 1930s published in European periodicals extolling the “Eden” created on Floreana Island (Galapagos) by the self-proclaimed “Adam and Eve” (Heinrich Ritter and his companion Dora Strauch) who abandoned civilization to pursue their imagined paradise. Those articles unwittingly lured others to Floreana seeking a similar escape from civilization, albeit a dissimilar imaging of paradise. Those dissimilarities were staged in the published memoirs of surviving participants Strauch and Marget Wittmer whose recollections rearranged facts to compete for the truth. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a revival of interest in the Galapagos Affair through men’s magazines of the era that sensationalized the sexual shenanigans on Floreana. Decades later, the artfully crafted and intricately researched 2013 documentary film The Galapagos Affair: Satan Comes to Eden ("The Galapagos Affair") by filmmaking team Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller reintroduced the story to contemporary audiences and, most recently, Ron Howard has directed a full-out fictionalization of the narrative—Eden (2024)—with international props by Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl, Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas.
Comparison is the death of joy, it is often said, enforcing the caution of confusing apples with oranges let alone one filmic genre with another, but the theatrical release of Eden generates a revived appreciation for The Galapagos Affair, and in some ways Eden feels like a remake, which invites the inevitable question of whether a remake was necessary? Regardless, it’s near to impossible to discuss one without the other. The question hovers over which filmic genre best suits the narrative: documentary or fictional feature? Or more fairly, both reveal aspects of the story that cater to the way the filmmakers prefer to tell the story.
The first and most obvious distinction between the two films is that Goldfine and Geller elect to retain the mystery and uncertainty of whether or not the Baroness and her lover have been murdered and—if so—by who? They go to clever lengths to present as many existing points of view as available, to hint at what they think might have happened, and to—in effect—craft a whodunnit murder mystery; but, they leave it to their audience to decide for themselves. That finesse is gamely eschewed in Howard’s film, scripted by Howard in collaboration with Noah Pink, where without hesitation or ambiguity Margret Wittmer’s recollection of events is preferenced over Dora Strauch Ritter’s, and argued as a done deal. One can feel Ron Howard’s tight grip for creative control over the loose ends of factual relativity. Where that might make Eden feel more structurally cohesive and entertaining, it delimits the ambiguity that makes The Galapagos Affair so informative and intriguing. For those who just want to know what happened, Howard’s Eden will satisfy. For those who want to wonder what happened, Goldfine and Geller excel, and ensorcell.
The rhythm of a feature film, after all, requires concessions to continuity and length. There’s no way that a fictional approach could afford the complex texture pursued by The Galapagos Affair. In conversation with documentarians Goldfine and Geller, they expressed their difficulty in broadening the “cast” of The Galapagos Affair to include the testimonials of peripheral agents in the events that took place in the 1930s, but which provided a depth and texture that Eden—in its dramaturgical necessity to abbreviate the story to achieve dramatic force—leaves out altogether. This makes Eden comparable to other feature films that follow the same formula of abbreviated compromise. Admittedly, that makes for a simpler story that is easier to follow, which some audiences might expect, but certainly not one that this reviewer favors as it takes the extraordinary complexity of these events and turns them into formulaic fare.
Eden becomes, instead, more an exercise in characterization with noted actors delivering competent performances, enacting the personalities and the scenarios that made the Galapagos Affair such a scandal at the time. These characterizations to further a plot are scriptural decisions of how a filmmaker wants to interpret a received narrative. A good case in point here would be the affection of Dora (Kirby) for her burro. Howard and Pink effort to script meaning to the relationship of the woman and her pet, but can only really achieve that through the animal’s death. Goldfine and Geller not only have the remarkable footage of Dora dancing with her burro, which reveals her joy and love for the animal, but the revelation in Strauch’s memoirs that she suffered from severe loneliness because of Friedrich’s cold demeanor and lack of affection, for which the burro compensated. None of that comes across in Eden. But it's important because her fantasies of affection color her recollected perceptions down the line.
Notably, the casting of Eden has made admirable efforts to match appearances. Toby Wallace and Felix Kammerer as, respectively, Robert Phillipson and Rudolph Lorenz look eerily like the two men at each elbow of the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn, who Ana de Armas inhabits as a sultry caricature. Again, it works for a feature film like Eden, but de Armas (already identified with sex goddess Marilyn Monroe) interprets the personality of the Baroness as an irresistible beauty—which de Armas undeniably is—but the Baroness, as seen in the ample footage shared in The Galapagos Affair, is not as beautiful as she is charismatic. It's too easy (or more expected) to be beautiful and have control over others, but it’s more interesting to have a charisma that manipulates and controls men. In other words, I have to give credit to de Armas for trying to be the Baroness when the woman we see in the documentary footage is the Baroness in all her eccentric allure—you can’t get around it—and I don’t think there’s an actress in the world who can do the Baroness better than the Baroness does herself. She was acting, after all. And she had it down.
In gist, the Galapagos Affair in whole is, without question, a great story, which was made into a great documentary, but unfortunately into just a good—but not a great—film.
