Gordon: Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly have been signed to star in Creation, a movie about the the life of Charles Darwin that will be directed by Jon Amiel. Please touch on this tomorrow (Source: Hollywood Reporter).
Trisha Lynn: Touch, or do a full article?
Gordon: Either way. If you want to write something longer, feel free.
Trisha Lynn: What’s the angle?
Gordon: I do have this fear it will focus so much more on Darwin’s life and relationships than anything he actually did. As most movies about geniuses do.
But that’s probably just knee-jerk snark.
Trisha Lynn: There’s not much entertainment or drama in movies about scientific discoveries unless there’s lots of sensationalism involved, like in Inherit the Wind. But that was more of a courtroom drama. The only thing I can think of that would be comparable would be if someone did a movie about Martin Luther and his 95 theses, or Socrates’ last days, or Galileo’s imprisonment. That would actually be pretty cool.
A guy sitting on a beach painstakingly cataloging the differences between tortoises? Doesn’t seem like it would make a good movie to me. But that’s just knee-jerk snark as well.
Wikipedia tells me that while there was a little drama surrounding the race to get his work published, the actual co-publishing of the book was done with a minimal amount of hassle. Also, while there was a huge hubbub over the findings, it was very much in line with what other scientists were observing about the world, which means that if Darwin didn’t do it, someone else would have.
So I disagree with you there. A movie about his life and his relationships with other people in the scientific community of his day would be way more interesting than a movie about his actual work.
MO says:
I don’t actually see that difference you’re constructing there betwenn “his life” and “his actual work”, as those parts you’ve been mentioning, the presentation, the publication, are essential parts of his work, aswell.
But I totally must side with you, Trisha, that just seeing him cataloging tortoises and finches
and then writing hundreds of pages about that doesn’t seem to make a very good movie.
And a good movie on Darwin seems to be almost necessary. Atleast in a country, where quite many people seem not to know what evolution means, but prefer to not believe in it.
To me, that seems the same like not believing in gravity. Pointless …
With greetings from Europe,
MO
Trisha Lynn says:
You make a very good point in that his work is definitely more than just the actual writing or research he did. I think I was assuming that his negotiations with the other scientists who were traveling along the same path as he did as to who would publish first would be part of that “relationships” angle, unless Gordon specifically meant how Darwin went about courting his wife and his relationships with his colleagues.