Charles Darwin film "too controversial ..."

Didn't know which subforum to place this in--and apologies if it's already been posted:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

 

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Interesting. New Scientist gave it a so-so review:

The problem with the film is the conceit of having Annie materialise and interact with Darwin in order to illustrate the impact her death had on him. As a device, it is unsubtle and irritating, and makes for a cartoon account of the writing of On the Origin of Species, one that presupposes that an audience will only appreciate Darwin's anguish if it is spelled out in gigantic, sentimental letters waved by a pretty ghost.​

 

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Yah whomever took that poll is so much bullshit, i live in Texas which is about as conservative as you can get in the US, and youd be hard pressed to find someone that DIDNT believe in evolution.

 

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Given the many other blatantly anti-religious (rather merely anti-creationist) films that have been successfully published in the US, it seems absurd to suggest that this movie can't find a distributor simply because it might offend creationist christians. Most likely the real problem is that it simply isn't a very good movie. Notice that the whole "we can't find a distributor because of the christians!" thing seems to be coming from the film's producer. That probably sounds a lot better than "We can't find a distributor because everyone thinks our film is really boring and won't make any money."

 

So how come all the politicians you afflict us with pander to fundies, your statewide textbooks (so oppressively influential nationally) in the schools are bowdlerized as if the theory of evolution were sexual perversion indecent to describe, and so forth?

You just exporting all your crazy, and keeping the reasonable home?

Very few truly anti-theistic films have appeared in my local theaters. Being anti-Church, sensationalized with stories of crime and betrayal by clerics, casting doubt on this or that historical claim, is not at all the same thing. Neither is anti-theistic implication, by omission or alternative - that goes right past the otherwise troublesome.

But it does sound as though the movie might be a hard sell to an American audience, rather than controversial - slow, quiet, psychological, built around a difficult idea and its influence. It's maybe not like "A Beautiful Mind" (a deeply anti-theistic movie, but not directly) - you can't skip the theory itself, or ignore its implications.

 

I agree. The producer may very well be reading too much into the film's lack of appeal to an American market; the style--slow, quiet, psychological, and thought provoking--seems antithetical to that which proliferates American movie theaters.

 

Are we talking about theaters? I assumed they meant a distributor for an American direct-to-DVD release, since that's about the best this sort of BBC docu-drama could possibly hope for in the US. When was the last time anything made by the BBC made it into American theaters?

 

No real surprise.

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Or TV special, which I was sort of including in the "theater" sense.

Which might be a little more likely now, with a bit of controversy.

But it's an inherently interesting story - with a happy ending, even.

 

There will be a distributor, but it may not be mainstream.

 

I'm pretty sure PBS and the Discovery Channel have specials about evolution all the time. One of the more recent ones was "Darwin's Tree of Life" by David Attenborough. So TV should certainly be no problem - but again, that's assuming the thing is actually any good in the first place. Since it apparently featured a ghost, I sort of have my doubts...

 

They don't deal with the religion stuff at the same time, though. I can see trouble coming from any portrayal of Darwin's life that delves into that issue sympathetically and with meaning.

 

There are so many movies that challenge faith out here, I find it hard to believe distributors are worried about offending creationists.

 

i think the answer is a simple one. perhaps the movie is like watching paint dry.

 

Perhaps it's a bad movie, but there are no shortage of those in American theaters!

 

? For example - - -

 

The Watchmen had some atheistic elements...

 

Wow, you're a prophet!

Darwin biopic Creation finally secures US distributor

 

Indeed - Watchmen featured a character who was supposed to be more or less all-knowing explicitly saying that he thought god probably didn't exist.

 

Survival of the Fittest

Darwin was not as embarrassed about the notion of survival of the fittest as U.S. modern day evolutionists seem to be.

Why?