Tall Order

One upcoming project I’ve been contemplating is Creation, otherwise known as “The Darwin Movie.” Two things will happen when this movie starts to launch – the first is that much of the publicity will surround Paul Bettany and Jennier Connelly working together as man and wife. The second thing that will happen is the inevitable controversy. It doesn’t help matters that the film will be called Creation. The film’s website features a statement from the film’s director, Jon Amiel:

Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, part heart-wrenching love story CREATION is the story of Charles Darwin and the single most explosive idea in history. Darwin’s great, still controversial, book The Origin of Species depicts nature as a battleground. In CREATION the battleground is a man’s heart.

Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth. This is not the grey-bearded old man that most people imagine when they think of Darwin.

The Darwin we meet in CREATION is a young, vibrant father, husband and friend whose mental and physical health gradually buckles under the weight of guilt and grief for a lost child. Ultimately it is the ghost of Annie, his adored 10 year-old daughter who leads him out of darkness and helps him reconnect with his wife and family. Only then is he able to create the book that changed the world.

Told in a collage of scenes from the past and present, laced with stories of exotic animals and the dark dreams of a troubled mind CREATION is a film that will provoke, entertain and ultimately deeply move you.

This film will get hit from sides is my guess. The scientists aren’t going to like the way it makes Darwin seem like someone prone to fantastical stories and influenced by ghosts. The religious people, mostly the Creationists, are going to protest anything that relates to Darwin and his “theory” of evolution. If it’s true that no publicity is bad publicity, Creation should get boatloads from all sides. Despite Darwin’s place in our history, there haven’t been many projects about him at all, probably because, even 200 years later, he’s still too hot to touch. For that, I admire these filmmakers for going there, even if it isn’t into the eye of the shitstorm.