Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin

Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly are star as Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin in Creation, based on a book written by Darwin’s great-great-grandson.

The film portrays Darwin as a man torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his growing belief in a world where God has no place. The scientist finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.

Collee’s script is based on “Annie’s Box,” Randal Keynes’ book about Darwin, his great great grandfather, and how the death of his daughter affected his views on religion.

Also joining the cast are Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones and Benedict Cumberbatch. The key role of daughter Annie will be announced soon. (Reuters)

Sounds like an interesting angle. Written by former doctor John Collee (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), this screenplay was originally called Origin, so the switch to Creation is a good indication it intends to address the scientific and ideological conflict head-on. Filming begins later this month. What other actor partners have played married historical couples in the movies?

More details about the book after the cut.

From Publishers Weekly
In this intimate portrait of the great naturalist as devoted family man, Keynes describes how Charles Darwin’s “life and his science were all of a piece.” The great-great-grandson of the scientist, Keynes uses published documents as well as family papers and artifacts to show how Darwin’s thinking on evolution was influenced by his deep attachment to his wife and children. In particular, his anguish over his 10-year-old daughter Annie’s death sharpened his conviction that the operation of natural laws had nothing to do with divine intervention or morality. Keynes, also a descendant of economist John Maynard Keynes, shows that much of Darwin’s intellectual struggle in writing On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man arose from his efforts to understand the role of suffering and death in the natural order of the world. Early in his career, Darwin saw the indifference of natural law as an answer to the era’s religious doubts about how a benevolent god could permit human misery; cruelty and pain, he argued, should not be seen as moral issues, but as inevitable outcomes of nature. After Annie’s death, however, Darwin’s views darkened, and in a private letter he railed against the “clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature!” Though Keynes doesn’t break new ground about Darwin’s life and work, he produces a moving tribute to a thinker who, despite intimate acquaintance with the pain inflicted by the “war of nature,” could still marvel that, from this ruthless struggle, “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Forecast: General readers attracted by the book’s warm, sentimental cover won’t be disappointed by Keynes’s equally accessible prose.