If only the fittest survive, ‘Creation’ is in trouble

The natural selection that determines box- office performance will ruthlessly expose the inherent flaws in "Creation," a lugubrious Charles Darwin biopic.

It stars Paul Bettany as Darwin, who, in the 1850s, is not keen to publish his revolutionary ideas about evolution, for fear they will offend the deeply religious, including his dour wife (real-life spouse Jennifer Connelly).

The movie dwells on Darwin's troubled personal life, I suppose to make him relatable to viewers, who may not share his rare genius, but who probably know someone whose spouse is a pain in the rear end.

So, there is little public argument about God and nature in "Creation," no actual manifestation of the intellectual and spiritual tumult his theories would inspire.

Instead, "Creation" examines Darwin's poor health, personal grief and strained marriage, and is generally the worse for it. As a melodrama, it's disappointingly flat. Bettany is one-dimensionally morose - it's like spending two hours with a guy who bet the Colts. And Connelly, never known as a buoyant presence on screen, occupies a narrow range of icy disapproval.

Too bad, because when the movie DOES engage Darwin's ideas, it's an engrossing and surprisingly inventive piece of work.

Director Jon Amiel seems most sure of foot when finding ways to illustrate the cold essence of Darwin's work - the merciless laws that govern survival of the fittest, that recycle the weak and the failed as energy for the strong and successful.

There's a neat scene at a family picnic, for instance, wherein the camera abruptly leaves to follow a rat into a hedge, where we see a microcosmic drama of death and regeneration enacted with birds and maggots.

It's lyrical, and a little chilling, and you feel Amiel reaching for the tone that might have made "Creation" a little more compelling. He tries again with the insertion of a ghost story - Darwin haunted by the 10-year-old daughter (Martha West) he lost to illness. She materializes to remind Darwin that she shared his inquisitive rational mind, and also that nothing in science explains the purpose of her life, her death, his broken heart.

Indeed, "Creation" drily and darkly notes the irony of Darwin's faith in science, which so clumsily and stupidly dealt with his daughter's condition (not specified, but diagnosed by historians as scarlet fever or tuberculosis).

Not a feel-good movie. But a provocative one, when it's on. I don't know that Amiel ever tops his credit sequence - swirling stars morphing into dividing cells, or pods of baitfish, shifting flocks of birds, a little dance of life.