‘Creation’: Unevolved
I had to laugh after I saw “Creation” at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, when I read speculation in the press that the reason it was having trouble finding an American distributor was its controversial content.
As if this weak-tea, droopy-drawers drama had a scintilla of anything that might be mistaken for controversy squirreled somewhere within its overlong running time. Perhaps I dozed through that part.
What most people were too polite to say was that “Creation” (opening Friday 1/22/10) is a colossal snooze: a drama allegedly about a hot-button topic – Darwin’s theory of evolution – that buries its most interesting material beneath a mountain of sudsy and dreary psychodrama that’s not all that dramatic.
In brief: Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany, with a shaved-back hairline that gives him a “Planet of the Apes” look) is in the midst of putting his theories into writing, so they can be published and eventually scandalize 20th-century fundamentalists. But he can’t focus because he’s in such deep grief over his dead daughter that he sees her specter everywhere and falls ill as a result. Then he gets better and writes “On the Origin of Species.” The end.
In other words, a Lifetime movie about a depressed dad instead of a bereft mom. Would you pay to see that?
If anything, “Creation” is a masterpiece of missed opportunities. The concept of evolution and how Darwin developed his ideas is endlessly fascinating, though probably hard to dramatize. But the controversy that remains as heated as ever, 150 years after his ideas were published, is barely mentioned.
“You’ve killed God!” crows Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones), after reading an early draft of a chapter. Sorry, Darwin says, too busy mourning.
“This is a war you cannot win!” warms his wife (Jennifer Connelly, perhaps the most ill-used Oscar winner in recent memory). No time to fight a war, Darwin says, I’m too sad.
Everyone is spoiling for a fight – or at least a spirited debate – except Charles Darwin, who doesn’t even care about finishing his book.
And so why should we? Darwin is known historically for this accomplishment, which was a long and arduous bit of scholarship. That’s what made him unique; that’s what made him interesting.
But dramas about parents forced to face life after the death of a child are a dime a dozen. Some are better than others but the emotions they plumb are essentially the same. To turn this story of Darwin into one of those is to waste a precious opportunity to offer insight into a subject that remains controversial to this day.
We get a smidgen of Darwin’s thoughts about the church – but his wilted faith is, again, more about the loss of a child than the pragmatism of a scientist. What did Darwin think of the controversy he created? How did he deal with the church? Was he a pariah? Did his theories have an impact on his family? Good questions, all – and all ignored in this dreary, lifeless film.
So, to summarize: “Creation” – a victim of timidity on the part of distributors? Chalk it up, instead, to shrewd business sense and an unwillingness to let a movie make a monkey out of them.
