What the Charles Darwin biopic “Creation” mainly creates is a do-over for Paul Bettany: This time he gets to have a beautiful mind.
Bettany, who played an imaginary friend to Russell Crowe in that Oscar-winning movie, spends much of “Creation” chatting with a ghostly vision of dead daughter Annie as he struggles to complete “On the Origin of Species” and his wife looks on. She’s played by fellow “Beautiful Mind” alum Jennifer Connelly, and as before, her chore is to stand around being alternately alarmed and exasperated by her loonybird hubby.
Although the movie tenderly observes the relationship between father and daughter and has some heart-rending moments, there isn’t a lot of doubt why it got made: because actors love to do crazy. Bettany is a pro and plays Darwin’s sweaty agony convincingly, but director Jon Amiel overindulges, and far too many scenes essentially do nothing except show us that it’s devastating to lose a child.
There is a refreshing hint of irony about the ultimate standard-bearer for Reason placing himself at times beyond reality’s reach, and even in his stable moments Darwin believed in “water cure” quackery to treat his feverish mystery illness.
Nevertheless, it’s simplistic at best for the film to argue that his daughter’s death was the reason Darwin lost faith. “On the Origin of Species,” in this film, is reduced to an episode of cosmic payback, a way of rubbing God’s nose in His own nonexistence.
“Tell me a story . . . about everything,” his daughter tells him, in a typical line of dialogue, and now Darwin’s colossal work is reduced further, to being a widdle bedtime story. At another point, Darwin is told he must finish his book in order to “come back and win it for us,” as though Team Reason were a lot like a football squad.
Surely what drove Darwin was not atheism, mourning, a desire to please his little girl’s shade or the fortunes of “us,” but rather a search for truth.