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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 24 September 2009

Original take on Darwin

CREATION
Directed by Jon Amiel
Certificate PG

THE figure of Charles Darwin has been pored over and dissected like one of the birds he bred to find evidence to back up his grand thoughts on the story of evolution.
So it is a clever trick of the director of this bio-pic, Jon Amiel, to find a new way to tell the background story behind “The Greatest Story Ever Told”.
This has been the year of Darwin: it is the bicentennial of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book that helped change the course of history.
Yet Creation manages to bring the scientist to life by focussing not on the Eureka moments in the Galapagos which helped form his ideas, but on the personal tragedy that tore his life apart and yet helped spur him to putting his ground-breaking thoughts on The Origin of the Species together.
We learn Darwin and his wife Emma lost their daughter Annie, the apple of her father’s eye, when she was a young girl. Haunted by the death, Darwin suffered a crisis of faith, added to his intrinsic understanding that the idea of God and creation is complete and utter nonsense.
The death of his oldest daughter and muse greatly affected him and this film suggests that it went hand in hand with his botanical and biological studies, helping him form his theories. Paul Bettany as Darwin is passable, but his wife Emma (played by his real life other half Jennifer Connelly) has little to do but look utterly scared of God’s vengeance.

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