“You’ve killed God, Sir.” When Thomas Huxley uses such grave terms to condemn the work of his fellow biologist Charles Darwin in Creation, director Jon Amiel sends a clear message to the audience: this Darwin biopic is rife with drama, but short on scientific explanation.
Based on the biography Annie’s Box, an account of Charles Darwin’s life written by great-grandson Randal Keynes, Creation follows Darwin’s struggle to create On the Origin of Species, a book that would not only challenge religious authority, but also his own mental and physical fortitude.
Darwin, played somewhat convincingly by Paul Bettany, is an afflicted man torn between scientific discovery and the moral implications of his radical ideas. By proposing that nature, as opposed to a divine being, selects for the survival of a species, Darwin unintentionally declares a war between science and religion. And yet he finds himself entrapped in a war much more debilitating: a war against himself.
The death of his eldest daughter Annie, portrayed brilliantly by newcomer Martha West, plunges Darwin into what can only be described as a schizophrenic episode in which he is tortured by a myriad of hallucinations. The tortured scientist, as well as the film itself, is further plagued with the reappearance of Annie’s apparition, making it difficult to decipher whether it is truly Annie or merely her ghost present. Although his performance offers cinematic excitement, Bettany’s character unfortunately comes across more as a psychologically unstable mental patient than the exalted scientist who had the confidence to publish such a controversial book and establish one of the more fundamental scientific theories of the modern age.
Through the loss of his daughter, Darwin’s religious faith also undergoes a palpable deterioration, causing a schism between not only Darwin and the Church but also between Darwin and his pious wife, Emma, played by Bettany’s actual wife Jennifer Connelly. Their relationship represents the inevitable conflicts associated with the convergence of science and religion, but ultimately suggests that the two can co-exist. Though in the film itself, science does not fare quite as well. Science plays a subordinate role, as Creation is essentially a story about love, loss, and faith—leaving questions about how Darwin came to his scientific conclusions unexplored.
Although Creation certainly lacks the scientific edge that anyone familiar with Darwin’s accomplishments would expect from such a film, it does offer a revealing illustration of Darwin as a husband and father, challenging the popular conception of the man as a scientific figure devoted solely to research. Anyone looking for a period piece filled with heartache, tragedy, and family struggles will enjoy this film, but those interested in the reasoning behind Darwin’s scientific postulations will find themselves wishing they’d just spent their time with a copy of On the Origin of Species instead.
