Charles Darwin Can't Get No Respect (With a Jay Leno Minority Report)

posted by Gareth Higgins

And so we turn to the news on a Monday morning: Things are going just fine in the world of dumbed down culture – I just heard a story on NPR suggesting that the writers of Jay Leno’s new TV show might struggle to deal with the fact that they’re on just before the news.  Not because of ratings, but because it is assumed that the audience won’t be able to cope with the shift in tone.  Which leads me inexorably to evolutionary biology, one of the most interesting British film producers working over the past thirty years, and why I rarely go to the movies for pleasure anymore.  Three thoughts follow.

Fact #1: So there’s this guy called Jeremy Thomas.  If you’re into film, you know him; if you’ve seen ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’, or anything Bernardo Bertolucci made since ‘The Last Emperor’, or Cronenberg’s ‘Naked Lunch’, or Jonathan Glazer’s amazing film about love and regret ‘Sexy Beast’, or Wim Wenders’ fascinating little experiment ‘Don’t Come Knocking’, then you know his work.  You know that he is serious about producing movies that both entertain, and say something about the world.  His latest production, directed by Jon Amiel, is called ‘Creation’, and is apparently not really a biopic of Lucifer God Charles Darwin.  It’s the first non-Canadian film in many a year to open the Toronto Film Festival, the gala screening happening just last week.  It looks like it might be a beautiful movie, that watching it might lead me to learn a few things about Darwin, and, given its producer’s habits of cutting through the tendency of some British film exponents to focus on getting people to visit on National Trust properties rather than telling a story about the human heart and what ails it, ‘Creation’ could turn out to be smart too.  (It also has one of the most gorgeous film-pub websites I’ve seen).

Fact #2: And there’s this thing called the Alamance Crossing multiplex cinema; it’s the closest multi-screen cinema to where I happen to be today.  Across its 18 screens, today’s offerings are as follows:

Sorority Row / Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad all by Myself / Whiteout / 9 /All About Steve / Extract / Gamer / The Final Destination 3D / Halloween II / Inglourious Basterds / Shorts / District 9 / The Time Traveler’s Wife / GI Joe / Julie & Julia / The Proposal

I’d like to see one of these movies.  And I’ve already seen it.

Fact #3: ‘Creation’ opens in the UK and Ireland next week.  But, despite an Oscar-winning producer, bankable stars in the form of Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany; and a subject matter that’s bound to create enough controversy to give birth to the kind of free publicity last seen when Mel Gibson made a few hundred million dollars out of the Crucifixion (to be fair to Mel, that’s the charge Kierkegaard makes of everyone whose profession includes theological reflection; so Mel and I are in the same boat; sort of), no US distributor has yet picked it up.  Now, it may simply be a bad movie; but, of course, on the evidence of what’s showing at Alamance Crossing, that doesn’t seem to be a major factor in whether or not a film gets distributed.  It’s clear that distributors are afraid that ‘Creation’ simply could not sell in the US.  The fact that this underestimates the potential for a campaign among Richard Dawkins acolytes to get bums on seats probably only confirms the fact that theatrical distribution is as rationalised as car production – we know how long a film’s going to stay at the theatre before it’s released – Harry Potter will stick around almost long enough to meet himself in the next sequel; on the other hand we know that we have to rush to see anything with a smaller release pattern before it disappears – remarkable films hitting arthouse screens for one week only, snatched out of our hands like the way my grandmother used to take a coffee mug away to wash it, sometimes before I’d finished drinking.

It may also be that the story of ‘Creation’s woes is a way to drum up publicity now; fair (or unfair) enough, it’s hard to get attention these days if your movie doesn’t star Batman or Megan Fox.  The disturbing element, if it’s true, is that people know that the fissures in what used to be called the culture wars, and which, recent alarming events indicate are making a comeback, can be exploited to make money.  Or to stop other people making money.  When Glenn Beck gets someone to resign because the anger stirred up about the person’s past affiliations has overwhelmed reason, or when progressives use disparaging language to describe the people who turn up to townhall meetings the effect is the same: a monolithic wedge is driven people who are going to have to learn to live together if the gleanings of their heroes are anything like correct (it’s ironic that both creationism and evolutionary biology can be interpreted to posit the notion that in a decaying world, human beings will stand together, in community, or fall as one).

It may be naive to suggest that it’s possible to disagree agreeably; that biblical literalists who dispute evolution could enjoy ‘Creation’ as a story about a historical figure’s personal tragedies and romances, and explore their own intellectual biases afterward; and that their debate partners could talk about this movie without demeaning the people who might feel threatened by it.  That kind of conversation might actually get us somewhere.  Yeah, it’s probably naive.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 8:31 am. It is filed under Blog, Drama, Film Festivals, Gareth Higgins, On Filmmaking, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.