Creation Gets Up Close, Very Personal With Darwin
After desperately seeking a U.S. distributor for his cinematic tale of Charles Darwin’s domestic and scientific struggles, director Jon Amiel’s Creation is finally set to open stateside Friday. But the movie wasn’t held up for the reason you might think.
“I’d love to say that it was a conservative, right-wing religious conspiracy that hampered the film’s distribution prospects,” Amiel told Wired.com in an e-mail interview, “but the truth is a little more complicated.”
And banal: The short version is that, in an age of blockbusters like Avatar and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, few studios are comfortable bankrolling period dramas, even if they happen to be about one of human history’s most important thinkers.
That could change if the PG-13 Creation, which stars Paul Bettany as the evolution-touting scientist (pictured), catches fire with a humanity experiencing a startling loss of the biodiversity that Darwin once famously celebrated. Wired.com spoke with an amiable Amiel about Darwin’s personal evolution, why biopic is a dirty word and much more in the conversation below.
Director Jon Amiel has finally brought his Darwin film Creation to the United States. Just don’t call it a biopic.
Photos courtesy Newmarket Films
Wired.com: Why is it we can count the amount of biopics about Darwin on one hand?
Jon Amiel: Don’t be calling this a biopic! I hate the damn things! Chronology is not plot. The fact that a person led an interesting life doth not an interesting movie make, and reverence is the enemy of good dramatic exploration. Imagine this pitch to a Hollywood studio exec: “So there’s this guy. He’s dead and he’s bald and he’s English but he’s really interesting. He goes off on The Beagle in his early 20s and finds all this cool stuff but then he comes back, retires to an English country house and for the next 20 years does nothing much, apart from begetting 10 kids and pottering around dissecting barnacles and writing learned monographs about earthworms and the like. Finally he writes the book that changes the world.” Who do you think is going to buy that pitch? Chronology is the rock on which many a movie script about Darwin has foundered.
Wired.com: Fair enough. What does Creation bring to the understanding of Darwin as not only a scientific luminary, but also a man caught up in historical forces outside his control?
Amiel: I knew about Darwin, but I never knew Darwin. Talk about Darwin and I’d imagine, as most of us would, the old fart with the forbidding gray beard and the dark eyes hidden beneath the big eyebrows. But what I came to know about the man and his life astonished me, and I think it will surprise any who see the movie. You can’t do full justice to the man’s ideas in a 110-minute feature film, but you can do justice to the man.
Wired.com: Creation delves quite a bit into his personal life.
Amiel: More than any scientist I can think of, Darwin’s ideas were directly rooted in the details of his daily life, and cannot be separated from that life. His children, the pigeons in his dovecote, his livestock, the ordinary creatures in the hedgerows around his house were as much, more perhaps, of an inspiration for his work than everything he found in the Galapagos.
Wired.com: Why was it so hard for the film to find a U.S. distributor?
Amiel: The fact is that any independent movie that’s A) about something, B) period and C) a drama is likely to have a very hard time finding distribution these days. Half the studios have closed up their indie production and distribution arms. Money to make these films is tight; money to market them is even tighter. Current Hollywood wisdom is that audiences will not support drama. Roughly translated, that means a depressed and recession-hit public don’t want to be made to think very much, or even feel very much. Creation is itself an endangered species. Americans need to understand that there will be an increasing number of films like this, from all around the world, that will never be seen on a big screen near them.
Wired.com: What do you think Darwin would make of our 21st century so far? Would he be freaked out about our future?
Amiel: No. He’d be utterly exhilarated by it! Nanoscience, genetics, neuroscience. He’d be going nuts!
Wired.com: What was it like working with Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes? And from his book Annie’s Box: Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution, upon which your movie is based?
Amiel: I was most grateful to Randal Keynes for not just assembling so many of the Darwins’ personal documents into a book that was the first really personal familial portrait of Darwin and his family. Nor just that he gave us access to all the artifacts and documents we needed, and advised on so many technical aspects. It was that he enfranchised screenwriter John Collee and myself to use our imaginations! He recognized that the filmmakers can pick up where he, the biographer and historian, has to leave off. He encouraged us to make some really important imaginative leaps in this film. Without those, this film would probably have ended up as precisely the dry, academic and reverential biopic I so fervently didn’t want to make.
See Also:
- Controversial Darwin Biopic Creation Coming to U.S.
- Legion’s Tattooed Angel Plays Darwin in Creation
- 10 Knights to Follow Patrick Stewart and Peter Jackson
- Backlash to Ben Stein’s Expelled Revs Up With Sexpelled
- Review: The Age of Stupid Gets Smart on Enviropocalypse
- At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution
View full post on Wired: Underwire
>> you have yet to give any viable evidence to support your statements.
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My posts cite chapter and verse. Of YOUR holy book.
@daren_gray
Well I do have a functioning system of logic and I have not gone all over the road of rationality, and my posts speak to that effect. If anyone is trying to throw bullshit, it is you with your lack of information and misinterpretation. I do not hate reason or logic as you say. But you clearly for whatever reason are blindly attacking the beliefs of others simply because you do not agree with them and you have yet to give any viable evidence to support your statements.
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So you go ahead and continue with your generalizations of “creationists”. I am not in their corner, and have proven myself not to be.
There was an article in wired a while back about evidence of speciation amongst finches:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/speciation-in-action/
There is also the often cited Diane Dodd drosophila esperiment: Dodd, D.M.B. (1989) “Reproductive isolation as a consequence of adaptive divergence in Drosophila pseudoobscura.” Evolution 43:1308–1311.
She geographically isolated members of the same population of drosophila melanogaster, gave maltose as the only food source to one population, starch as the only food source to the other. After several generations passed, she then tested their mating preferences, finding that they preferred inter-population mates. If she had kept raising the flies in isolation for a sufficient amount of time, she would likely to have found complete reproductive incapability.
A creationist can’t bring himself to read (or understand) Darwin, but he’ll read Sean Hannity.
The passages in the Bible requiring genocide as a holy task are unambiguous, as well as commands to perform spontaneous acts of extra-judicial murder (killing with a spear, stoning). Adherents of this belief system prevaricate and spin the text, and likely gain traction with those who do not have functioning systems of logic, i.e. bullshit detectors. For those who do, it is a simple matter to read the holy books and draw your own conclusions. As I said, the best way to anger a religionist is to study their scriptures. Do not take my word on this or any other matter. Read the passages yourself.
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According to the Christian holy book, Jesus allegedly said in Matthew 18:2-6 that one must become like a child to enter the kingdom of Heaven. The messages of the Christian holy book are so straightforward and self-evident that even a child can see their truth. Allegedly. But when you talk to their clerics, disciples, they always try to place a barrier. They try to claim that you simply cannot understand unless you’re on the inside. I was asked on this comment thread how I could understand Christianity without belonging to the club. His own messiah refutes him.
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Of course, I can and do understand. Because the teachings of the Christian faith are clear. And genocide is unambiguously mandated by the Old Testament Jehovah, who, by the way, is the exact same god of the New Testament. Unless, the brilliant step of offering his “only” son (he couldn’t make more?) to redeem the faulty automatons that he cocked up in some way unhinged him.
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Further, if the Old Testament is so outdated and its tenets of behavior no longer apply, then why do American fundamentalists insist that the Ten Commandments be placed in public buildings in the 21st century? I guess some people didn’t get Jehovah’s memo that the Old Testament is “ancient history” and he’s got a whole new thang going on now.
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It’s all bullshit and made-up. And any conversation with a religionist inevitably veers all over the road of rationality like a drunken motorist on a lifetime bender. Except they call their inebriation enlightenment. And that’s why creationism and creationists receive nothing but scorn. It’s well earned. And they simply don’t have the internal error checking systems necessary to realize how unstable they are.
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A creationist hates reason, sourcing, and logic like a vampire hates garlic-flavored sunlight. That’s why Dawkins or Darwin always come in second to Kirk Cameron or Ben Stein.
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Out of the mouths of babes…
@samagon
It’s ok, man. People aren’t stupid, they will see that he only answered the last question I asked in that entire rant; with total bullshit and lack of common sense. I prove that he was wrong in how he was interpreting those passages, and he still says he knows more about my faith than I do? He’s in denial because I ripped his argument apart. He may have read the Bible cover to cover, but he clearly doesn’t understand a single thing he has read from it.
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I also believe him when he says that he has come across Christians who don’t know the Bible. I know that probably happens all the time, which is sad. This is probably one of the first times he has actually gone up against a Christian who DOES know the Bible, and now if you notice, he has nothing to say except bullshit. He is just too scared to admit he was wrong. So it’s ok. There’s no reason to keep dragging this argument on. Let him fool himself.
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@daren_gray
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Dude, I could give a rats ass what you believe. And I am far from a “religionist”. I do not preach the Word of God to people, or try and convert people to Christianity. And I think I have proven that I do not use my faith as a basis for my argument against Evolution. I argue Evolution through it’s words and definitions and the blatant holes in it’s theory.
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I will say it again: the only reason I fought you on the passages was because you were grossly misinterpreting them and misrepresenting them. I wasn’t trying to convince you that you were wrong, I was ensuring that other people who read the comments will see and know that you don’t know what you are talking about. Which I have done, and you cannot change that fact. So stop defending yourself as if I am trying to convince you to believe anything. I am not.
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@monkeykins
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I am not going to sit here and pretend to know who is a “true” Christian. There is only one person who knows who are “true” Christians. You can have Christians who misinterpret the Bible. I was not discussing the differences between Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, or Presbyterians, or any other denomination.
As for the Nazi argument, weren’t their “Master Race” views just a warped extension of Darwin’s theory that selective breeding could improve humanity… Sounds like creationism is just as much to blame as religion in their grand plans…
I can start by saying I am not religious never been to church ever, so this isnt an attack on evolution but there are some points I would like explained…
Its my understanding a simple definition of a species is that its members can interbreed to produce fertile off spring eg a horse and donkey are not of the same species because they produce an ass which is infertile.
With that in mind are there any documented provable cases (the scientifically accepted method of proving a theory) proving the evolution of a new species. Natural selection leading to adaptation yes alot of examples everywhere but the generation of an entirely new species? Domestic dogs are breed to all shapes and sizes but all still produce fertile offspring, has anyone bred something with a rapid gestation period (insect eg) under extreme circumstances and produced a new species?
I dont want to go into any more points as this could be a very long post, so maybe you can point me towards some good sites about the subject, but growing up in Africa and in the bush there are ALOT of examples of animals with less than ideal traits which hinder them in some way or would be easier if they were built a little differently, how were these brought about and survived etc I see this is requiring faith which ever way you look at it, so am interested into looking into this more…
Aah, what a great return from the weekend.
@Unr3al
Beleive it or not, there are a large number of Christians who very much beleive in the literal truth of the entire Bible, and use the entire thing as a literal set of commandments for how to think and act in every day life. I’ll point out my family and upbringing as evidence. I could be lying, but I don’t really have a reason to. I’ve had my parents tell me to beware God’s wrath, and don’t feel very comfortable sleeping around them, Abrahamic tests from God and all. I’ll assume you understand the reference. I could also refer you to the Dr. Tiller murder trial. You can, and likely will, argue that the people I am refering to are not “True” Christians. They say the same of “softer” faith. I don’t have to point out the Bible itself claims innerrancy, and it seems the fundamentalists have the source material backing them up. I wish it wasn’t true.
@daren_grey
Since we’re off topic, if you haven’t already, check out The Scripture Project, at reasonproject.org. It’s an exellent resource.
I’m about to finish The Blind Watchmaker, by Dawkins. It’s an exellent, if a bit dated (1985), explanation/ summation of Darwins work. It’s also a little in-depth, not quite vacation reading. I’ll be getting Greatest Show on Earth next, to cap off my reading in honor of the 200th Birthday of Darwin. Got started late and regret not actually reading “Origin of Species.”
Can we get these comments made into a movie
@Unr3a1 “Scientifically, Creationism is also a theory. Neither Evolution nor Creationism can be proven by scientific method.”
1) You are using the word incorrectly. The lay use of theory and the scientific use of theory are mutually exclusive. The lay use implies a guess. A scientific theory is a well-supported body of interconnected statements that explains observations and can be used to make testable predictions.
2) Creationism is not a theory in the scientific sense, it is Christian mythology which some claim they can find evidence to support. It is not supported by the biological community and it cannot produce any predictive statements which have the potential to be false.
Please take an Introduction to the Philosophy of Science course. Just so you can have correct information before you try to use lay meanings in place of discipline particular jargon again.
Look that word up.
>> He had them go through and kill every living thing in the cities because the people that lived there were so wicked, that they would have influenced the Israelites to follow along with their wickedness. It was also because of their wickedness, they needed to be held accountable for their actions and punished.
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Genocide.
Jeff Spicolli, creationist.
Totally schooled, dude!
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Um, okay. Roll with that then.
Oh yeah, I like how you just decided to call that other guy names after he totally schooled you on your bible references.
It means to look at the definition of a word once in a while.
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Sorry to interrupt your trolling session. Carry on.
I don’t even know what that means.
>>Faith is not a virtue. It is an absence of reason. I choose reason.
You also choose to not care about Merriam or Webster.
And if you really want to get a religionist angry, take them at their evangelical word, and study their scripture. They hate that.