Creation

Charles Darwin is struggling to write On the Origin of Species. His ten-year-old daughter Annie has died, and since then he has lost both his health and his faith. His wife Emma is devout and knows what the book will mean. Darwin wants her consent to write it. The subject is not science but a marriage. The conflict at the centre is not between religion and evolution but between two people living in the same house who lost the same child. Emma's fear is not that her soul will be damned but that she will never meet her husband again after death. The form turns inward: Annie's ghost appears to Darwin and the scenes move between the real and the remembered. The nature footage is set inside the narration and not over-embellished. The source is a book by Randal Keynes, a descendant of Darwin who wrote it from the family archive. Jon Amiel directs. Darwin and Emma are played by Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, who are married in life; Martha West, who plays Annie, is Dominic West's daughter. Who it is for: viewers who like portraits of scientists and period drama built on grief. Who it is not for: anyone wanting to learn the theory; the film barely explains the science and keeps its weight inside the family.