You can say this about a movie, if it makes you cry then it’s worth watching.
And so let us speak on the topic of Mr. Charles Darwin and the history of the Origin of Species.
The movie Creation is a biographical picture of the family life of Charles and Emma Darwin and their children. It is a reflection on the relationship between Darwin, his wife and his daughter Annie. Much of the movie revolves around the loving relationship between a very curious and inquisitive young girl and her doting father.
Mr. and Mrs. Darwin live in the quiet idyllic English countryside where they had moved after Darwin’s return from the voyage in the Beagle. They have, at the time of the movie, five children, with the eldest, Annie, always by her father’s side. Darwin would cultivate Annie’s curiosity about the natural world by pointing out all the aspects of nature around them. The bucolic English countryside was a vibrant eco-system ripe for exploration by children and Darwin would often lead them in expeditions.
However educational the excursions may have been, the children most undoubted enjoyed the stories that their father told them. They were invariably about the adventures he had experienced aboard the Beagle and he never got tired of telling them about all the strange creatures he had come across. The children were obviously enthralled by their father’s tales and they adored him.
The movie is revolves around the death of Annie and the subsequent emotional fallout between Charles and Emma. Annie was on the beach with her father when she was taken ill. The doctors were not able to do anything for her and subsequently she got worse. Desperate for a cure, Darwin moved her to Malvern for water therapy. However, she did not improve and eventually died.
Darwin was so devastated that he had a psychological breakdown. His relationship with Emma soured to the point that they stopped making love. He saw Annie everywhere as she appeared to him as a hallucination. She kept goading him about making his theories public and questioned his motives about being silent on the issue of publishing his works. Through her eyes we get a picture of the inner conflict between Darwin’s scientific instincts and his unwillingness to offend his wife sensibilities. Emma was mortified at the prospect of not being untied with Charles in the Afterlife. Annie’s death had driven her deeper into the arms of her faith and she was adamant in her position.
One of the most poignant moments of the movie is when Annie wants to know about the story of Jenny, the first orangutan to have been shown in the London Zoo. She was a native of Borneo and was captured and brought to the zoo after a long sea voyage. Darwin had spent some time studying her and found her to be an emotional being that was capable of love, empathy and camaraderie. However, she contracted pneumonia and died in the arms of her keeper. To the last moment of her life Jenny had demonstrated intelligence and emotion- something Darwin had found to be fascinating and he told Annie the story. The child was riveted by the tale of the ape but she was most interested in the story of her death. The sadness of the event appealed to her emotional maturity, for Annie was quite the precocious child. When her younger sister was upset at the sight of a fox killing a rabbit, it was Annie who was able to console her by telling her that the baby foxes would not starve to death since the mother fox had been able to acquire food for them.
One of the most gut wrenching moments in the movie is when Annie lies dying and asks her father to tell the story of Jenny once more. By the time Darwin finishes the story, the poor child breathed her last. Darwin’s grief drove to the edge of sanity and his health suffered to the point where he himself had to undergo the water therapy at Malvern.
The doctor of the establishment, James Gully insisted that Darwin face the facts about the death of Annie and reconcile himself with it. In a 19th Century harbinger of marriage counseling, he instructs Charles to speak to Emma honestly about the death of their child. Darwin visits the house where Annie had died and he breaks down sobbing. The outpouring of grief is almost cathartic but I must warn you, it is very emotional and viewers would find it very hard to hold back the tears.
Darwin returns to his home and has a heart felt conversation with Emma. He confesses that he thinks that she blames him for Annie’s death. We hear a very interesting view held by Darwin- he was terrified of the fact that since Emma was his cousin, their children would be weak and vulnerable to genetic diseases. As a naturalist these considerations were fairly obvious to him but it was his love for Emma that had overridden all the objections he may have had. Emma and Charles reconcile and become intimate again.
Having recovered and reestablished domestic peace, Darwin returns to writing his book, egged on by his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, played immaculately by Benedict Cumberbatch. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, when Darwin was lying in his bed, incapacitated, Sherlock Holmes came calling to shake him up from inaction. There is a danger that another biologist, Alfred Wallace may get to write about Evolution before him. So after twenty years of vacillating between whether or not to write about Evolution, it is now a race against time.
After finishing his book, Charles asks Emma to read it and leaves it to her judgment whether it should be published or not. She reads it through to the end and acquiesces to the idea of publishing it. And thus begins the most amazing chapter of scientific discourse in the natural history.
The movie is quite amazing and the cast is stellar. Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly play Charles and Emma while Jeremy Northam plays the vicar John Brodie-Innes. Young Martha West plays Anne Darwin, and judging by her performance, surely we are to expect great things from her in the future. It was directed by Jon Amiel and produced by Jeremy Thomas.
As a biographical piece it is not a straight line story telling event. In fact much of the narrative involves jumping back and forth in time in the form of flashbacks. The whole script was rather neatly done and the story, despite its rather complicated form of telling keeps you riveted. It does not hurt to have very talented actors play the parts but clearly the strength of the movie lies in the central plot- a grieving father’s reflections on a beloved child who had died.
Creation is available on DVD format and instant viewing on Netflix.
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