EDEN

Set in the 1960s, EDEN depicts Helen (Joanna Going), a twenty-something teacher’s wife with terminal multiple sclerosis, who experiences vivid dreams as her disease debilitates her body more and more. Dave (Sean Patrick Flanery), a trouble-making student at Mt. Eden prep school, lives with Helen and her husband, Bill (Dylan Walsh), a teacher at Eden. She is at odds with Bill’s get-tough teaching approach with Dave and encourages Dave to study with gentleness and kindness, in contrast to Bill’s stern attitude. As Helen deteriorates, she experiences out-of-body travel.

EDEN begins as Helen feels frustration and unhappiness at her domineering husband’s strict approach to teaching Dave. Bill learned Eden’s tough prep-school teaching methods when he himself was a student there, and he uses the same methods on his students. Bill feels the pressure of Helen’s deteriorating illness and copes by trying to ignore it and by expecting her to “act tough” and pretend it isn’t there. He resents Helen’s reaching out to Dave, perceiving it as interfering with his teaching. What Bill doesn’t realize is how much he really needs her.

One day, medics transport Helen to the hospital, where she lapses into a coma. The doctor tells Bill he is not sure that she will come out of it. Distraught, Bill realizes how much he needs Helen. David is crushed at seeing Helen’s condition and begins to neglect his studies again. Having always taken credit for Dave’s improvement, Bill can’t understand why his tough approach isn’t working anymore. Dave makes Bill see that it wasn’t his toughness which made a difference in his life; it was Helen’s tenderness. Bill finally realizes how selfish he has been, and how he never fully appreciated Helen’s special qualities.

It is refreshing to see characters in a movie learn something from their behaviors and make healthy changes. Helen’s gentleness and encouragement are depicted as more valuable than Bill’s rigid, tough approach to life and to people. However, once Bill sheds his harsh exterior and begins to feel his pain, his heart begins to soften.

Joanna Going plays the part of Helen in a very convincing manner. Likewise, Dylan Walsh, who played Paul Newman’s son in NOBODY’S FOOL, plays the “get tough” Bill powerfully.

A problem with EDEN is Helen’s giving her out-of-body experiences New Age labels. Not having a Christian worldview, she attributes her experiences to astral projection, whereas it is common knowledge among medical doctors that patients struggling with debilitating diseases often experience flights of imagination as their body disassociates from their painful situation.