Directed by: Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine.
Written by: Dayna Goldfine and Daniel Geller and Celeste Schaefer Snyder.
Featuring the Voices of: Cate Blanchett (Dore Strauch), Sebastian Koch (Heinz Wittmer), Thomas Kretschmann (Friedrich Ritter), Diane Kruger (Margret Wittmer), Connie Nielsen (Baroness Von Wagner), Josh Radnor (John Garth), Gustaf Skarsgård (Rolf Blomberg).
The
Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden is a documentary about a mystery that
happened in 1934 on one of the Galapagos Islands. It was a deserted island when
Friedrich Richter and his girlfriend Dore Strauch left Germany to live out
their days on the island. He was a successful doctor who was tired of society
and felt increasingly alienated from it and decided he wanted out. In Dore, he
found someone he thought could share his island retreat with him. At
first, they are by themselves on that island – and although Dore finds it
harder than she thought it would be and the two argue more than they thought
they would – with no one else around it was inevitable. Then another German couple
– the Wittmers – arrive, having read about the Ritters in the paper, and thought
it sounded great. Margret Wittmer is pregnant, but doesn’t think it will be a
problem – after all, Ritter is a doctor. It never dawns on them (for some
reason) that a pair who left society wouldn’t want them around. Still, the two
couples live in relative peace – that is until a self-stylized Baroness arrives
– bringing with her two men, both of them appear to be her lovers, and plans to
build a hotel on the island. She causes a massive stir – one that only ends
when she, and one of her lovers, goes missing.
The documentary is mainly made up of a surprising
amount of silent footage of the people involved – most often playing under the
narration written by the two women – Dore Strauch and Margret Wittmer – and the
other people involved in the case. The narration doesn’t really clarify
anything because more often than not, the people involved have differing
versions of events – as both cast suspicion onto the other couple, although
both cast even more suspicion on the surviving lover. There is also narration
by some of the various boat captains, who came to the island infrequently, and
thought that nothing anyone was telling them made much sense. When the movie
sticks to these narratives and counter narratives, it is a fascinating mystery –
one that has no real resolution (although based on everything that happened
afterwards, I have my suspicions.
But the movie adds other scenes – modern interviews
with the descendants of the people involved, or just other people who inhabit
the island now. Some of this is probably necessary – it helps to have someone
verbalize all the different scenarios that may have played out with the disappearances.
But some of it just isn’t necessary, as it details the lives of others on
different islands, and the way they lived their lives – which is pretty much
already covered by the narratives of the people directly involved. The film
runs two hours, which for the amount of interesting material in the film feels
a half hour or so too long. The filmmakers seem to have been swept up in the
romance and beauty of the islands, and wanted to include everything they could
in the film – but too much of it doesn’t really belong.
Still, there is enough interesting material here to
make the film well worth spending a couple of hours with. It is a tantalizing
mystery which is all the more interesting because it was never solved. The film
is far from perfect, but it’s still fascinating.
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