Creation: story of Darwin

I've been reading the Obama! thread from time to time, but I have avoided jumping in.



And mutton-chops: the single stupidest thing ever done to a man's face.

It seems to have a good pedigree, in that they're drawing from a book written by Darwin's great-great grandson, who used personal documents etc to flesh out the big D's human side. Plus the focus on the problems in his marriage seems a solid place to get to know the man (I believe he held back on publication, and on revealing his increasing atheism, for decades in part out of respect for his wife's beliefs).

That said, the title suggest there's going to be a bit of religion-challenging fisticuffs. And the official mini synopsis is a bit provocative in places...

The bit in bold seems like deliberate ****-stirring. I'm pretty positive Darwin didn't claim it did any such thing. His experiences & experiments may have helped kill the idea of a benevolent God in him, and his ideas may have outdone biblical versions of human origins etc in terms of verifiability... but that sounds like the claim of some provocative producers alone

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The sourcing does sound promising, though adapting from the writings of someone so close to the situation, of course, has its own pitfalls. But on the whole that's pretty reasurring.

I think you're dead-on about the synopsis...if it's an accurate description of the film, it would constitute a bit of twisting to play into the religious angle. Perhaps they think the backlash is inevitable, so they might as well take a side, rather than put out something that both sides feel is too easy on the other; I dunno.

Wondering if they'll explore the aspects of racism inherent in the original work at all? Heck, will we even see the book's full title (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life)?

True that. Will be interesting to see how much is true & how much extrapolation in this bit: "and a theory saved from extinction by the logic of a child". The book written by the descendant seems to have cautiously gleaned info from the kid's toy box, so not sure how that's going to pan out.

Oh please, not that old canard. Darwin was no more racist (or misogynistic etc) than anyone else of his time. But there is evidence he was anti-slavery, and his work on the joint heritage of all races, of a 'brotherhood' of man, suggests he was a fair bit less racist than the average Victorian.


EDIT: this sub-discussion is continued in Was Darwin a Racist?

The movie will definitely catch a lot of hype because it is made at a time when there is a huge debate on Darwinism and Intelligent Design Theory. If not much atleast some big attention.

We need to take this movie in the spirit of watching it.

Agree with you dude.

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Sounds like it got a reasonable reception at Toronto, but still no US deal in the offing. The producer seems to think it's a numbers game, with the US being relatively 'anti evolution' (Altho the focus of the film does seem to be as much on his family life as anything). It looks like it's going to be a sub-mainstream number all told, so that's another reason for distributors dodging it perhaps. Wouldn't be surprised if someone picks it up for a little 'niche' run tho, especially with the free 'controversy' publicity.