(2009) Following the death of his eldest daughter and favorite Annie (Martha West) at the age of ten from scarlet fever or tuberculosis in 1851, Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany) procrastinated at composing his notes into the manuscript that would become On the Origin of the Species. In October 1858, suffering from a stomach ailment and tremors for which he was taking laudanum, Darwin receives two visitors at his country estate, the renowned botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the biologist (who would become known as "Darwin's Bulldog") Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones), encouraging him to have the moral courage to finally produce his book.

"You've killed God, sir," pronounces Huxley: "Science is at war with religion." Charles replies that religion is the imperfect bark upon which society floats.

His wife Emma née Wedgwood (Jennifer Connelly) - who gave birth to ten children (one died in infancy, another, the last, as a small child in 1858) of whom, other than Annie, only Etty, George, and Lenny are depicted - was his first cousin and a devoted Christian. Taking refuge in religion, fearful that her husband will lose his immortal soul and be denied entrance into heaven, she says to Charles, who has retreated into science, "that you and I may be separated for all eternity."

Emma urges Charles to have a session with their friend and local pastor, Rev John Innes (Jeremy Northam); but during their discussion, in which the minister speaks of the magnificent plan of the Creator, Darwin, having completely lost his religious faith, retorts with counterexamples of the waste and cruelty for brutal survival taking place in the incessant war of nature.

Tormented with the guilt of having been responsible, in taking her to Malvern for a water cure, for Annie's death, Charles is haunted by hallucinations of her presence in dreams and reveries, during which they have colloquies. To Emma he appears to be going mad.

Director Jon Amiel's biopic - adapted to the screen from Randal Keynes's biography, Annie's Box, by John Collee - frequently flashes back to when Annie, his loyal disciple, was alive, asking her father to retell the stories of Fuegia and Jemmy, who as young children after being removed from their native culture on Tierra del Fuego and raised as English Christians were returned to the island in hopes of converting other members of the tribe only to completely disappoint those expectations, and of Jenny the orangutan in the London zoo, who so impressed Charles with her intelligence and human-like emotions.

When he receives Alfred Russel Wallace's letter with a rival theory of evolution, expostulated in a mere few dozen pages, Charles nearly gives up working on his book. In treating Charles for his illness, Dr Gully (Bill Paterson), a hydrotherapist, insists upon the necessity of his patient regaining his faith (in himself, in science, in his project, in those he loves) for a cure to be possible. Upon completion of the manuscript, Charles hands it over for Emma: "You decide what should be done with it … Read it first."

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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