'Creation' a Brilliant Tale

The image most people have of Charles Darwin is that of an old man with a long white beard sitting in a chair, perhaps lost in contemplation about the common ancestry between apes and humans. That’s a valid but very narrow view of this multifaceted, brilliant scientist. (Most people think of Abraham Lincoln’s beard as one of his signature physical characteristics, though he was clean-shaven for most of his life—such is the power of an iconic photograph.)

In fact, Darwin was much more than that. As the new film Creation shows, he was a devoted family man. He was a semi-reclusive, frail scientist who spent much of his time watching animals and scribbling his observations in notebooks. He was also an adventurer and explorer, an author, and the man whose work serves as the foundation for modern biology. Darwin’s contemporary, explorer and scientist Sir Richard Francis Burton, praised On the Origin of Species in 1863 as “the best and wisest book of this, or, perhaps, of any age.” A century later, evolutionary biologist and Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky famously noted, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Creation tells the true story of the circumstances surrounding Darwin’s crowning creation, On the Origin of Species. The film is not really about Darwin writing the book; that would be cinematic suicide (as any screenwriter can tell you, watching someone write a book is about as dramatic and interesting as watching someone read a book). Nor is the film a biography of Darwin’s life, though several of his earlier adventures on the H.M.S. Beagle and elsewhere are told in flashback as stories to his children. Instead the film is about one of the world’s greatest scientists and his family, about how he was deeply in love with a religious woman who profoundly disagreed with much of his life’s work and the revolutionary theory it birthed.

Charles Darwin was clearly a man as enamored with his family as with his study of the world around him. Charles explains the naturalistic world to his children: how a camera works, how the geological strata of rocks tells a story of what happened millions of years ago, and so on. Several fanciful segments appear that are essentially miniature nature documentaries, for example using time-lapse photography to depict nature’s life cycles. Rarely has a mainstream film so effectively conveyed a wonderful, humanistic sense of the magic and awe of science.

Darwin (played by Paul Bettany) struggles to write his book as he battles poor health, internal and external pressures, and personal demons, especially regarding his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and his brightest daughter, Annie (Martha West). In one of the most moving and impassioned scenes, we see Darwin’s rage after Annie is punished in Sunday school for questioning her vicar and asking about dinosaurs. Darwin’s outrage is palpable as he prepares to confront the priest about punishing his daughter for simply speaking a self-evident scientific truth—not blasphemous impertinence.

When Annie dies, Charles is devastated. While Emma takes solace in the idea that their beloved daughter is in heaven with God, Charles can’t bring himself to share her comforting belief. Nor is he willing to accept the insulting and feeble “comfort” that Annie’s death is part of some greater divine plan; he has studied the cycle of life and death in nature, and is too much a scientist to pretend that his family is exempt from nature’s cruelties.

Creation’s most remarkable achievement is to humanize one of the most important and influential scientists in history. It’s no secret that most scientists in films are depicted in an unflattering light. Horror films often depict scientists as Dr. Frankenstein-like evil geniuses whose experiments bring death and destruction. Comedies show scientists as socially inept nerds obsessed with numbers and data crunching. In the wake of the recent “Climategate controversy,” climate scientists were portrayed as deceitful and conspiratorial hoaxers trying to mislead the public about global warming. Rare indeed are films that show scientists as real humans with problems and struggles who do their best to reveal scientific truths.

That On the Origin of Species was written at all is a minor (humanistic) miracle. Darwin suffered for most of his life from a variety of symptoms that would have challenged the productivity of the hardiest soul, including muscle spasms, nausea, vomiting, vertigo, headaches, exhaustion, blurry vision, insomnia, fainting, rapid pulse, depression, and cramping. He was bedridden many times, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. (The next time you’re in the throes of a cold or flu, see how much you feel like getting out of bed to do experiments, give lectures, or set pen to paper in writing one of the most important science books in history.)

In a pivotal scene, Thomas Huxley (a piss-and-vinegar brimming Toby Jones) confronts Darwin, urging him to complete his long-gestating book. When Darwin says he needs more time and more evidence, Huxley barks: “Mr. Darwin, either you are being disingenuous, or you do not fully understand your own theory. Evidently what is true of the barnacle is true of all creatures—even humans. Clearly the Almighty can no longer claim to have authored all species in under a week. You’ve killed God, sir. You’ve killed God.”

Darwin is unnerved by this bold, confrontational statement, but Huxley continues: “Science is at war with religion—and when we win, we’ll finally be rid of those damned Archbishops and their threats of eternal punishment!” 150 years later the archbishops are still around, and the “debate” continues.

Never before has threat of Darwin’s ideas to creationism been so clearly depicted in a mainstream movie. While other films have downplayed or glossed over the friction between On the Origin of Species and the Bible, Creation tackles it head-on. Stephen Jay Gould’s conciliatory notion of the non-overlapping magisteria of science and religion is out the window; here we have the bare-knuckled, Richard Dawkins view of the issue.

Though the Church of England did not officially denounce Darwin or his books upon publication in 1859, many senior Anglicans and bishops were hostile to Darwin’s ideas, and challenged them at public debates. In 2008, the Rev. Malcolm Brown, head of the Church of England’s public affairs department, issued a statement saying that the church owes Charles Darwin a belated apology for its initial reaction to Origin of Species, and “by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand [Darwin] still.”

Though Creation is one of the best films of the year, it falters in a few places. The relationships between Darwin and Huxley seemed barely fleshed out, and the script could have given a better sense of the social and intellectual climate into which Darwin’s textual time bomb would soon be thrust. Outside of the clergy (who had understandable concerns about the book’s implications) just how receptive was the general public to the book? These questions and a few others are left unanswered. Also the chronology of some scenes is confusing when the narrative jumps back and forth between before and after Annie’s death.

In an interview with The Guardian, Paul Bettany said, “Darwin was a social conservative who had a revolutionary idea, and it was very difficult for him. I think once he had this idea, he couldn’t help seeing how it fit like a glove everywhere he looked, in the indifferent cruelty of nature. I don’t think it is a film about atheism, but for me, as an atheist, to have a viable alternative is incredibly important. The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. It’s a spur to try and rise above our own nature. Human beings have brains that are big enough to take them out of that brutality, and that is a faith of sorts, because it’s in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary…. Darwin is a hero of mine and I think in the absence of Jesus, he’s a really useful hero to have.”

The performances in Creation are as remarkable as the script. Paul Bettany evokes Charles Darwin with seeming effortless ease, and truly inhabits the role. His Darwin is deeply conflicted, afraid of how his ideas may hurt those he loves, and wracked with guilt that he may have contributed to Annie’s death. Jennifer Connelly is wonderful as Emma, depicting not only her strength and devotion to Charles, but her own conflicted devotion to her faith and her husband’s work. Bettany and Connelly are married in real life; the couple met on the set of another film about a tortured genius, Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind. The real standout performance, however, is newcomer Martha West as Annie Darwin. West imbues Annie with an intelligence and curiosity rarely seen in performances by child actors. She’s the sort of clever, inquisitive girl that would likely grow up to be the next Marie Curie—making her death all the more tragic. Toby Jones and Jeremy Northam, as Thomas Huxley, and Reverend Inness, respectively, are excellent as well in their small but important supporting roles.

Creation premiered on the opening night of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival in September. At the time, Creation producer Jeremy Thomas lamented the fact that the film had not yet found a distributor in the United States. “It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the U.S., and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the U.S. has picked it up.” That issue may or may not have been exaggerated for publicity, but in any event Creation was eventually picked up by Newmarket Films—ironically perhaps best known for releasing Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 religious gorefest The Passion of the Christ.

There has been some controversy over the film. Movieguide.org, a Web site that reviews films from a Christian perspective, bashed the film as “a one-sided bit of propaganda,” and claimed that “evolutionists have yet to produce any tangible evidence of intermediary species....” This patently false statement of course betrays a willful and profound misunderstanding of the archaeological record; they even trot out the old long-discredited idea that “evolution scientists have never produced an adequate explanation for the creation of the human eye,” as if that question has not been effectively refuted countless times. Though the film takes a strong and powerful stand for science over creationism, it is not overtly anti-Christian in tone, and it seems unlikely to generate the same furor that Passion of the Christdid.

The film was directed by Jon Amiel, from a screenplay written by John Collee, which in turn evolved from the biography "Annie’s Box," written by one of Darwin’s great-great grandsons. Creation has been well received overall, though some early reviewers have groused that the film is boring; perhaps they were expecting the story of the development of the theory of evolution to be told amidst action-packed swashbuckling and explosions. Creation is beautiful and powerful, with great performances and important ideas about faith, love, loss and truth.