Creation is the story of Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin, if you did not know, is often associated with matters surrounding life's evolution. While persons previous to him had suggested life's evolution, none proved its truth to the extent that he was able to through the use of scientific data. Further, in setting the mechanism of natural selection alongside evolution, Darwin enjoys a certain originality.
However, Creation is not really about science. It is neither a documentary of Darwin’s now famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, nor is it a narration of The Origin. It is primarily a story about Darwin’s two great loves: His daughter Annie, and his wife Emma. Here's a trailer.
Featuring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin, and Jennifer Connelly as Emma (Bettany and Connelly are real-life husband and wife…), this is a touching film about love, and the beauty of life. I don‘t want to anticipate your experience, so I leave aside the emotional power of this film, and instead identify three observations.
1. Proponents of Intelligent Design will be challenged by Darwin’s rather sarcastic observation regarding “the love he [God] shows for the butterflies by inventing a wasp that lays its eggs inside the living flesh of caterpillars.” Referencing Malthus, and Malthus’ observation regarding the way in which epidemics, famines and wars keep the world’s limited resources in balance with those who would consume such resources, Darwin asks “why this exceedingly wasteful plan?” In light of a Creator often associated with goodness, why does it have to be, as Tennyson describes, nature “red in tooth and claw”?
2. Creation invites reflection on the meaning of suffering and death, and where God fits into these experiences. Darwin is not above praying for those he loves: “Sir, I kneel before you in all humility. If it is your power, God, to save ----, then I will believe in you for the rest of my days.” Compare the experience that every person has (the loss of someone they love) to the way in which Rev. Innis prays that God teach those in his congregation that “all misfortune, all sickness and death, all the trials and miseries which we daily complain are intended for our good…[are] the corrections of a wise and affectionate parent.” Is that the meaning we want to attach to suffering and death?
3. Creation invites reflection about what is owed to the truth. Emma asks: “Charles, do you not care that you may never pass through the gates of heaven, and that you and I may be separated for all eternity?” She believes he is “at war with God,” but for what reason would he be separated from her for all eternity? As he puts it: “I owe it to my children to have the courage of my convictions.” Does that really warrant damnation?
To conclude, Creation presents Darwin in a way I have often pictured him, as a cautious naturalist, and as sort of point of moderation between the extremes of those who believe he is at war with God (and therefore worry for his well-being) and those who praise him for having killed God.
K.
Lately I have developed a fascination for biographies, a really avid interest in the lives of those who have gone before us, what made them great or normal, what made the human. Of course we can never really understand a person but through a good movie or book, we can certainly empathize with them more.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds really interesting to me and like one I would be inclined to watch for sure.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Colleen, I'm still waiting for one on Little Richard.
ReplyDeleteAs far as "Creation" goes, if you like the opportunity to empathize with someone you might otherwise not be too familiar with, this one gives you an excellent opportunity. Once you've seen it, let me know what you think.
I suspect that, like me, you'll appreciate it. Everyone I've recommended it to has...
I was so sorry for him, how the loss of his daughter unhinged him and how he suffered that loss. In times like those, if we cannot cling to the Lord to help us overcome, then our faith becomes as nothing.
ReplyDeleteI liked how he said something about faith, how the loss of it happens in so many small steps (I can't remember the actual words), and I thought that was true. We let our faith go, peice by peice, till one day we open our eyes and it is gone.
I don't admire and am not a believer in Darwin's theories. I also like what he inferred in his ramblings about society and what would it be like without its faith and its honor, etc. Well, now we have that. A society without God is a heartless society, that is selfish and self-centered and puts enjoyment and pleasure above the care of others. Just look around.
I dont think Darwin meant to make war on God, or on faith, but in the end, it seemed like he just did not care.
One fact that is wrong in the movie, according to his heirs, is that the book was not given to his wife to approve or disprove. She would not have approved it, they said. But that is just a little change the movie made.
We saw it last night. It really moved me and struck me as beautiful and terribly sad.
ReplyDeleteThe quality of the film is certainly beautiful (very surprisingly, I wasn't expecting that), and certainly yes, the actors are able to capture the sadness that someone like Darwin or his wife might have experienced.
ReplyDeleteBut, but, but, "Creation" should leave a person with a sense of hope (I hope it did; otherwise I wouldn't have suggested it...).
Darwin and his wife were finally able to face each other honestly, and you see them recapture (perhaps intensifying) the love that they once felt for each other.
Darwin's neglected children, by the end of this film, are experiencing their father finally being there again for them (and interestingly, quite ready to read "Pilgrim's Progress" to them...).
Charles and Emma, I think, ended up having 10 children. Two died in child-birth, and there was Annie as well, but I think as a husband and wife they lived in happiness. And as a Father, Darwin seems to have found a way to become one for the living.
Beautiful...sad...hopeful...
I did notice and see hope in those things as well and speaking of hope, this movie left me with a sense of hope in God as well, even though that probably wasn't the intention. What I found sad about it was the rift between God and man, the way faith can be lost and along with it, much else.
ReplyDeleteIt is worth a watch.......... as a parent who has lost a child, I can highly recommend Emma's choice, her prayer before the altar, her clinging to the Lord. Her hope(and her knowledge) of a heaven, and the certainty of seeing her beloved Annie again, is a much better way of dealing with loss. For one thing, not only is it true, but it keeps us sane and able to continue on in difficult times. I loved the scene where she was on her knees at the altar. I remember being there, and then rising again, with strength to go on (not a one time thing, but needing to do it again and again.) The Lord is there to fall on, and in. He gets us through, when otherwise, left to ourselves without hope, we might, indeed, go mad.
ReplyDeleteI cried with them at the loss of their child, and then watched them walk in opposite directions. One, in which there is healing, and the other, in which there is none.
A movie worth watching, for sure! Well done! And yes, victorious and sad at the same time....Kate
This movie started out well, but the whole pyscho-drama with the role of the daughter's death in his hesitation in writing the Origin of Species struck me as a little contrived. Maybe there is "documentary" evidence of this, but these attempts to "get in their heads" that modern movie makers seem to want to do in every film d'epoque strikes me as unfounded backwards psychoanalysis. Maybe all of this was the case, but it could have been better done, and done more subtly, rather than conjuring up Freud avant la lettre. For me, that ruined the movie. I do like the comments about the actual state of nature contra intelligent design, but for me bad melodrama can ruin any movie, no matter how interesting the message.
ReplyDelete