Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney, and Vanessa Kirby’s new R-rated thriller Eden recounts a version of the mysterious story of the settlers of Florena Island in the early 20th century. The real-life survivors provided contradictory accounts, and the Oscar-winning director of this biopic has weighed in on why they depicted these deaths in this way.

Eden follows Heinz (Daniel Brühl) and Margret Wittmer (Sweeney), who move their family to the remote island, inspired by the philosophical Dr. Ritter (Jude Law) and his partner Dore (Kirby), having apparently successfully done the same. The Ritters aren’t happy about the intrusion, but things start to get out of hand when an ambitious Baroness (de Armas) shows up with plans to build a H๏τel.

Conflict arises and spirals out of control as the settlers fight for resources, until Heinz agrees to help Ritter confront the Baroness, resulting in Ritter killing her and Heinz killing Robert Phillipson (Toby Wallace). In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Eden director Ron Howard directly stated that “nobody knows exactly what the final violent acts were.“

Howard revealed that he and screenwriter Noah Pink surveyed the accounts of what happened on Florena, and based on what they understood about these people, wrote into the movie what they thought was “a viable outcome.” Check out Howard’s comments below:

[…] it is a mystery. So nobody knows exactly what the final violent acts were. They just know who disappeared or died. And so in reading the various accounts, there are a lot of vague accusations being put forward.

In putting it all on the table and combining it, it was pretty easy to come up with a very viable outcome. And that’s what Noah and I went with. So yes, that’s us surmising, but informed by every bit of information that we could find and every understanding of the characters and who they were and what their inclinations were and how violent they could tend to be and so forth.

The movie depicts Heinz killing Robert in a charged fight, but he states that he only wanted to confront the Baroness, while Ritter kills her in cold blood after she has clearly lost. Historically, Dore and Margret’s two accounts clashed, as both accused the other’s husband of killing the Baroness, while Marget also implied that Dore poisoned Ritter. Howard comments on these two characters specifically below:

These women who arrived on the island in an almost subservient way wind up becoming really alpha members of their family unit, and taking charge of their own survival or survival of their loved ones in a really potent way, which is something that no one ever wrote about, particularly when analyzing this story. But when you put it all together, to me it’s powerful. It’s interesting. And it gave the actresses something really memorable to play.

Howard spoke in another Entertainment Weekly interview about being “almost like detectives” as they pieced together the narrative, as well as why they included footage of the real people in the credits, to underscore the movie’s lesson. Howard featured images of the real people because, as he said:

We explored — it was like a parlor game over a period of time. We sat around and said, Could this have happened? How about this? Almost like detectives. I’m trying to parse out the options. And so this is the one that just resonated with us as both from a standpoint of character logic and narrative logic as well. […]

People need to come to terms with what this movie is, what the kind of cautionary tale that it actually presented is, who these characters really were.

What Ron Howard’s Comments Mean For Eden

The “true” events depicted in Eden are the type of historical mystery that inherently can’t be solved, as only the people who were there actually knew what happened, and they delivered conflicting accounts — so someone had to be lying, and they had clear personal motives to do so. The movie positions the Wittmers as more heroic, but Dore is still a sympathetic character.

While Eden debuted with an underwhelming Rotten Tomatoes score, what works about it as a movie is that trying to be completely accurate isn’t really the point. As Howard’s comments reveal, he and Pink came to their own conclusions about what happened, but they hoped to emphasize that the movie is about the different ways humanity may adapt in these circumstances.

Our Take On Ron Howard’s Comments On Eden’s Deaths

From a narrative standpoint, the way things play out in Eden is essential when exploring Ritter’s hypocrisy is a core theme. The filmmakers aren’t the only ones to think this version makes sense, as Abbott Kahler, author of Eden Undone, theorized that the Baroness’ spurned lover and Ritter were likely responsible for the murders — so, the movie may have gotten it right.