John Amiel’s Creation is a curious beast indeed; a film about a great thinker struggling with dilemmas of faith and belief that ultimately strands itself by failing to properly observe its subject.
The life of Charles Darwin definitely has filmmaking potential, and personally I might have preferred to see a picture that followed his travels on the S.S. Beagle and time in the Galapagos.
Instead, Amiel and his screenwriter John Collee adapt a biography by Randall Keynes (Darwin’s great, great grandson) that focuses on his family life, his relationship with his daughter Anne and the circumstances surrounding the eventual publication of Origin of the Species, his seminal work that created a paradigm shift in modern thinking.
When Darwin’s young daughter Annie dies prematurely at the age of 10—the results of a fever brought on by exposure to the elements—he finds himself questioning a God he doesn’t completely believe in and considers casting off a lifetime of controversial research. Contrasting and complementing Bettany, Connelly (his real-life wife) delivers a strong supporting performance as a woman who also has her convictions but strives to care first for her family, including her complicated husband.
Creation has a beautiful serenity to its compositions and imagery, and highlighted sequences where Darwin loses himself in stories he tells Annie are engaging and evocative of his scientific studies. A passage involving his visits to see Jenny the orangutan are particularly compelling and hint at a what a film about Darwin the naturalist might have been like.
The all too brief sequences of Charles and his offspring interacting with nature are clearly the most interesting; watching the scientist come out as he tries to breed birds for variation or quizzes his daughter on what kind of starfish it is she is holding are mostly frustrating because they are narrative dead-ends.
Instead, Amiel’s film seeks solely to tell a more intimate and personal story about a family recovering from crisis and struggling when philosophical differences threaten to tear it asunder. This too could have made for a fascinating film, and at some level it does.
As a biopic offering a more introspective look at a significant historical figure, Creation works just fine and as a dramatic endeavor one could do much worse. It’s mostly pleasant to behold and even-handed; there’s nothing here edgy, controversial or even very deep. Much of that is due to the script; not the dialogue or events, but how they are pieced together.
For some reason the filmmakers have decided to tell the central story out of sequence and taking a page from the A Beautiful Mind (the last time Connelly and Bettany were onscreen together) they imagine Annie as a spectral visitation that vocalizes the doubts and fears that plague the ailing Darwin.
The problem is that the film never signals when it is jumping through time and we can never be sure when we are seeing a reminiscence of the real daughter or the apparition who serves as her father’s inquisitor. Trying to pay attention as if this were The Sixth Sense and looking for telling clues gets in the way of what we should be focusing on, the slow internal evolution of Charles Darwin.
In the end, Creation doesn’t trust the truth it is basing itself on. A proper picture about Darwin that draws out both the intricacy of the work he was doing and the tension between his theories and the long-held beliefs of the time would be a worthwhile and complex film. Alas, what we get here is an entirely competent and by-the-numbers version of Charles Darwin in Love.
Rating: 
As a scientist, I found this movie ridiculous. I finally quit watching it after the penetrating glances at the little bird being eaten by maggots were transformed into Darwin’s supposed premonition of Annie’s death. That was totaly stupid!!!! There was very little in what I watched that explained adaptation as the basis of evolution, but instead seemed to focus on the ridiculous popularization of survival of the fittest. The fittest could be a wee insect if it had mutated to the point of being able to adapt to a new environment. I am sure Darwin’s daughter was very precious to him, but hardly the propulsive force of developing his theroies!!!!!
1st) I’ve never heard a “scientist” use the words “totally” and “stupid” in a the same sentence. Well, even at all.
2nd) The movie wasn’t bad. It wasn’t that great but not terrible. It was more on the life of him struggling with the death of his daughter than with his theories. Also, and you, or anyone else can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Charles Darwin lost his faith long before the death of his child.
This movie, even still, had it’s moments. The struggle over God over science was perfect. He was a man who dared to question what he was told.
I enjoyed this movie and would even watch it a second time.