German director, Boris Kunz’s Paradise, is an intriguing Sci-Fi movie. It stars Kostja Ullmann and Marlene Tanczik in the main roles. The storyline takes place in a dystopian era, where human lives can easily be exchanged for hefty cash.
Max works as a donation manager/salesperson for AEON, a company led by Sophie Theissen. Although first introduced by Sophie to help her daughter with progeria, human greed caused it to exceed its limits.
Those in Berlin who couldn’t afford a good life are made to sell their lifespans in exchange for attractive money.
However, after his wife Elena’s years are taken by AEON, Max makes it his goal to get back the years at any cost. The main cast of Paradise consists of Kostja Ullmann as Max, Marlene Tanczik in the role of Elena, and Lisa-Marie Koroll as Marie Theissen.
Paradise 2023: What Happens In The Film?
The movie begins with Max completing one of his tasks for the day, where he has to get a donor to give up his years. After convincing a young 18-year-old boy to sell his years in exchange for money and citizenship, Max returns to AEON, a huge company with protestors outside it.
Max is given the Donation Employee award by the intelligent and cunning Sophie Theissen, who’s the owner of AEON. Theissen then proceeds to announce that all of the Nobel Prize winners will be included in AEON’s database and checked for a donor regularly.
Their celebrations ended up being short as most of these Nobel Prize winners who had received the treatment were killed by a group that called themselves “Adam Group.”
This terrorist group sought to bring back order in the world by destroying this new technology that had produced a huge gap between the rich & the poor and turned humans into cattle.
To make sure that Adam Group doesn’t attack again, Sophie hires a new agent named Victor. Max and Elena return to their apartment one day and see it burning down in flames helplessly.
Max tries to get insurance for the apartment, but they blame Elena for what happened and insist that the fire was caused by her mistake.
To pay for the huge damages, they force Elena to sell her years, more specifically, almost 40 years of her life. Max tries to get Sophie’s help, but she does nothing to stop it. The years are taken, and Elena starts aging very quickly. Max makes up his mind to get back his wife’s years soon.
After finding out that Elena is Sophie’s match, Max plans to kidnap Sophie. After stalking her for a while, Max quickly tases “Sophie” and brings her to his van.
Instead of Sophie, Max ends up kidnapping her secret daughter, Marie. Marie was hidden from the public eye, so Max had no idea who she was and just assumed that it was a younger version of Sophie.
Max takes Elena and Marie to an illegal doctor who knows AEON’s technology. Although Elena is doubtful of taking years from Marie, she later convinces herself to go through with it. The Adam Group finds out Elena and Max’s location and tries to use them to get Sophie Theissen.
Lilith reveals what actually went down between Max’s family and AEON. Max was sent to Elena as a donation manager to get the years from her for Sophie. However, instead of completing the task, Max ends up marrying Elena. This made it harder for Sophie to get the years from Elena, her only matching donor.
Sophie waited for the right time for years, and when she urgently needed a life donor, Sophie set fire to their apartment and put Elena in a position where she couldn’t back away from donating her life.
The AEON crew arrives with the police and surrounds the shed where Adam’s group and Max are hiding. As said in the plan, Max goes out and asks to talk to Sophie privately. A very young-looking Sophie steps out, showing that she has used the years given by Elena.
Adam’s group’s plan A fails, so they enforce plan B, which is to get Victor to shoot Sophie. Victor was a part of Adam’s group all along. He shoots twice at Sophie and is shot by her bodyguard. Chaos occurs at the shed, and Elena escapes with Marie and Max.
Paradise 2023: Ending Explained
As we approach the end of Paradise, we see that Max is the one having doubts about the transfer, as he knows it’s not Sophie and instead Marie.
She was innocent and had done nothing to harm the Toma family. Elena had made up her mind to get the years back, even if it meant using Marie. Since Sophie was shot, Marie was her only option.
Elena drops Max off in the middle of the road, as he did not agree to the transfer, and heads off to the illegal doctor’s location.
She is successfully able to get the years from Marie and feels no guilt whatsoever. Meanwhile, Sophie turns out to be alive as she is wearing a bulletproof jacket the whole time.
Sophie consoles a much older-looking Marie and implies that she won’t be giving up her life’s years, even to Marie, her only child. Fast forward to a few months later, we see that Max and Elena are not together.
He quietly stares at her from a distance and sees that she’s pregnant again and happy with another man. As for Max, he has given up his perfect life at AEON and joined the Adam Group in their mission to end this dystopian technology.
The ending of Paradise isn’t exactly happy, but it’s what each of them deserves. Max was living the good life, carelessly taking years from poor people and giving donations to the rich. It was only when Elena was the one donating that he realized how awful it was for the donor.
As Max didn’t want her to take Marie’s years, Elena decided to drop him from her life. After being forced to give 40 years of her life to Sophie and seeing her old body, Elena started to resent everyone.
It was only fit for her to take things into her hand and do what she wanted, even if it was without Max. The true victim here was Marie, but as Lilith said, she never really did anything to stop her mother too.
Paradise is a good Sci-Fi movie with an interesting plot and great actors. There could be a sequel considering how the film ends, but we might just have to imagine the rest ourselves for now. At present, Paradise 2023 is available to watch on Netflix.
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