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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Charles Darwin film "too controversial for religious America"?

I read the news today, oh boy, about a British film that failed to make the grade. It's about Charles Darwin and hasn't found a distributor in the United States supposedly because his theory of evolution is "too controversial for American audiences." So says its producer, Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of "Creation," according to Telegraph.co.uk:
US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.
    Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder." His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering," the site stated.
    The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying."
This news is rather sad. Mr. Thomas is further quoted as saying:
The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
    It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we [sic] in the UK to imagine religion in America [and quite difficult for some of us who live here]. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
    Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying "kill all religion," he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people.
A day in the life of America? One hopes that Mr. Thomas is merely exploiting America's embarrassing tendency to blow its mind out in a Sunday School bus to try to gin up some publicity for the film when it does get released in the United States.

"Creation" stars Paul Bettany, the fine actor we all enjoyed as the imaginary Princeton roommate of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) in Ron Howard's 2001 four-Oscar-winning film, "A Beautiful Mind." "Creation" was directed by Jon Amiel and also stars Bettany's wife, Jennifer Connelly. They met in "A Beautiful Mind," for which Ms. Connelly portrayed John Nash's wife (and won an Oscar for it).

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