User Reviews

I found the slow-paced and intimate scenes one of the better aspects of the movie. It has a feel of sadness to it that these people live their lives ordinarily while Jews around the world are slaughtered by the Nazis's. Yes, the lighting and camera-work is horrible at times, yes, it doesn't really have a point to it, but it does have a certain beauty in its depiction of human intimacy even at times of horrific events. For me the most unforgivable flaw is the way how they neglect to put any emotional tension in the storyline. Things just happen for no other reason than that it was written in the book. Motives are left unclear and the director fails to put any of the events in a clear context. And then there is the horrific dialogue making people talk to each other as if they are reciting a book. It's so stiff and dry to watch.

This could've been a beautiful movie, but it just isn't.

Questionable lighting, unnecessary monologues, dramatic music during long scenes with no action... this is the worst movie I have seen in a string of mediocre films. I sympathized with no one, not even the purported heroine. Even Arthur Miller sounded like he was woodenly reading a script, with no inflections or expressions to make him seem like a real person. I struggled to stay awake and spent several minutes wondering if my time wouldn't be better spent outdoors in the beautiful autumn sunshine. I stayed, hoping things would improve and there would be a point to the film, but either there wasn't one or I missed it entirely.

Both portentous and perfunctory, 'Eden' ought to have important things to say about the origins of Israel, the failure of idealism and so forth, but someone has not done the necessary work. The opening sequence sets the tone: a long, long sequence of people building walls with cement bricks, very slowly, arduously and apparently without much skill. Though beautifully acted (especially by Samantha Morton) and photographed, the whole movie is a bit like that. There are huge absences where a script should be. Very long, slow scenes can release a lot of power - Tarkovsky is the shining example, but something actually happens in his endless shots. There are scenes in this film in which the director seems simply to have neglected to tell the actors what to do: a motorcycle drives into shot, turns round and drives out again; the heroine visits the building site and, after some considerable time, has a little interaction with a labourer, and they do a bit of business with some stones which makes no sense and merely looks made up on the spot. They seem to be waiting for the director to call `cut'. And so are we. The film is so slow and so hollow - despite its large 'themes' - that the audience is reduced to asking what ought to be trivial questions: why is the heroine so obviously English when the rest of her family are American? Why do the father and son hold all their conversations with one looking over the other's shoulder? Why would a strong-minded woman, sitting in a parked car, keep saying `Let me out! Let me out!' instead of just opening the door? Why did not Arthur Miller, who wrote the original story, not notice that some of the dialogue was literally unspeakable, when he was the one who had to speak it? Why are pretentious movies always full of Mahler? Is that man going to read the whole of Gropius' diaries aloud? Will this never end?