On one level, Creation is the story of the composition of one of the most important and controversial books the world has ever seen, “On the Origin of Species.” On another, it is a deeply personal story, caring far less about the details that make up the theory of evolution via natural selection and far more about the details of its author’s heart and the long and agonizing journey he undertook to make public the single most provocative scientific idea in history. Creation is a surprisingly moving and emotional film, told with historical fidelity and a welcome incongruity that makes room for both a restrained historical palate and a weird and wonderful visual verve.

Though we get a couple flashbacks of the HMS Beagle plowing through the sea, encountering exotic natives and dispatching its young, untried naturalist to the auspicious Galapagos archipelago, the film spends nearly all of its time and resources on a sickly, middle-aged Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany, who look shockingly like the real man), his devout wife Emma (played by Bettany’s real-life wife, Jennifer Connelly) and Annie (Martha West), their eldest daughter and the apple of her father’s eye. Darwin takes Annie and her siblings on nature walks, fills her head with stories of his adventures, and finds in her his greatest pupil.

And so it is that when Annie succumbs to illness and death, Darwin is emotionally and spiritually blasted. He walks out on God (literally) and watches helplessly as a wall goes up between him and Emma, a wall that was already under construction following his assertions that evolution and not God was responsible for the biological shape of our planet. “You are at war with God,” Emma tells him, fearful of being separated from him in eternity. “We both know it is a war you cannot win.”

For his part, Darwin is not an eager soldier in that war. Though other scientists such as Joseph Hooker (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones) encourage him to complete his manuscript and violently wrest power from the church, the prospect of killing God, as Huxley predicts Darwin’s research will do, proves physically and emotionally debilitating. Darwin rightly understands the shockwave his theory will have both in the world at large and within his small family. But the more he procrastinates, the sicker he becomes. His refusal to commit manifests itself in a torturous psychological condition. When events conspire to force his hand at last, Darwin must decide what is most important: his health, his wife’s regard or the dissemination of discoveries that will alter the course of history itself.

Bettany has played Darwin before. Sort of. In the fabulous Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (a film which shares the same screenwriter as Creation), Bettany plays a ship’s surgeon and amateur naturalist who stands up for science and reason in the face of superstition and ignorance. Anyone watching that film knew who he was standing in for, and now Bettany is allowed to pick up where he left off, back on dry land, wrestling with the ramifications of his research. The superb Bettany is, as usual, more than up to the task. However, his degenerative, sickly condition makes him difficult to get close to or engage with. That relief is granted in the character of Annie, a vivacious, effervescent girl who grounds the film and makes us care about both the man and his mission. Annie remains on screen even after her death, transforming into her father’s invisible conscience, an intellectual sparring partner who is our most obvious example of his conflicted soul, even as we understand his voracious need to keep her near. Connelly is riveting as the loving, long-suffering wife whose emotional state we can read only by her song choice when sitting before a piano. And while some may see Huxley as a one-dimensional caricature, are his words all that different from modern atheist evangelists like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens?

Creation is based on Darwin’s great-great grandson Randal Keynes’ book, “Annie’s Box.” It shows rather than tells (a trait all too rare in film these days) the global revolution being played out within the confines of a modest English cottage (filmed at Darwin’s actual residence). Director Jon Amiel illustrates the beautiful cruelty of nature as well as Darwin’s tortured state through old-fashioned, clever camera tricks, as well as impressionistic, hallucinogenic sequences. Reminiscent of those PBS documentaries your parents (thankfully) force fed you as a child, we watch the circle of life play itself out in stunning time lapse photography. We are treated to surreal visualizations of Darwin’s ragged soul as his study, suddenly a chamber of horrors, comes to life. Rather than simply exposit that our protagonist is torn between his love for his religiously pious wife and his own solidifying belief in a world no longer requiring God as an explanatory feature, Creation literally shows us the collision of faith and reason. It refashions instantly recognizable Christian iconography—such as Michelangelo’s Sistine moment of creation—into something at once perverted, satirical and frankly beautiful.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Cast: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Martha West, Jeremy Northam, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones
Director: Jon Amiel
Rated PG-13 for some intense thematic material.
Running time: 108 minutes