ArthurKaletzky

I saw this film on 19SEP2009 at the Cambridge Film Festival.

The Beagle's only in a couple of short flashbacks, the whole thing is about Darwin's life from 1841 to 1859, when he was ensconced in Kent with his growing family, 200+ pages of Origin had already been drafted and he was wondering whether to complete the book.

The script is based on Randal Keynes's book Annie's Box (Annie, Charles's daughter, died when she was 10). It is mostly a family drama, but does include sex scenes - however, the participants are married, both on and off screen. Not too exciting, not much science but a well-made film that's pleasant to watch and pushes the right emotional buttons. A bit of a romantic weepie, actually. I suppose the conclusion is that you can be an agnostic free-thinking scientist from an atheist family background and still be an emotional romantic as well as an excellent father.

Some of the characters and Darwin himself state or wonder whether he "killed god" but the viewer is able to doubt that. What is beyond doubt, given the deadly struggle for survival and the web of predation on the meadow-bank (well-known before Darwin and completely uncontroversial) and the failure of Darwin's prayers is that the idea of a kind, providential god who loves "his" creatures is untenable.

I really cannot see many Americans objecting to it very much. Some may have problems with the title, which is probably the most controversial thing about the film, or with the fact that Bettany does not have horns, a tail and a pitchfork.

This is both a great film and a very enjoyable one. A masterful addition to the film-about-film genre, it is a homage to a number of other directors, a thriller, a melodrama but more than anything else, a wonderful studio tour completed by excursions into the cast and crew's (not so) private lives. It stands with Mikhalkov's A Slave of Love and Truffaut's Day For Night as a great achievement in the genre. I've liked a lot of Almadovar's work but this, I think, is his best. See it if you love cinema.

Many will have noticed that Penelope Cruz's character's name, Magdalena, is a reference to Kim Novak's character in Vertigo, but one should also note that her occasional workname, Severine, is the name of Catherine Deneuve's character in Belle de Jour.