Charles Darwin & the Tree of Life:

“That Mr. Darwin Should have wandered from this broad highway of nature’s work into the jungle of fanciful assumption is no small evil”

“Fails utterly”

“I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. It is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of a mephitic gas”

These are some of the initial reviews which Charles Darwin’s revolutionary theory & book “On the origin of species” provoked on its initial publication on 24^th November, 1859.

Produced by BBC to mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, with the presenter Sir David Attenborough Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life is a 2009 television docume

ntary that is vividly a catalogue of major scientific events and contributions enhancing the theory of Natural Selection

The one-hour documentary covers a wide range of subjects from Darwin’s visit to Galapagos, his collection and observation of different kinds of species, his reflections over it, formatting a definite theory in 1844 A.D. and patiently waiting for next 14 tiresome years in collecting the mountain of evidence in his theory’s support. The documentary also embarks on the nostalgia of Attenborough, visiting his own college and practical class rooms along with Attenborough’s old footages from his previous LIFE series.

It takes the audience on a tour to Natural History Museum in London, most prestigious of its kind, giving a glimpse of the 20 years of close friendship and then lifelong rivalry between two renowned and scientists of intellectual spectrum of the era, Charles Darwin and Richard Owen, the highest fossil collector of bones and the man behind naming the dinosaurs.

The documentary also covers in context and relation to natural selection some of the important theories and inventions like Marie Curie’s Dating System to calculate

the age of rocks by studying the amount of Uranium in it, Nobel laureates Watson’s and Crick’s Double Helix structure of DNA, Continent Drift theory explaining the same species on continents apart, connecting links between primitive organisms to today’s complex living entities deduced from fossils (archaeopteryx) to present living creatures ( Hoatzin & Platypus ).

The film starts with Attenborough quoting from the Holy Bible, “On the third day, plants were created. On the Fifth day, Fish and birds were created. On sixth day, He created Man. God asked Adam and Eve to leave the Garden and establish their dominance over the fishes of seas and the fowls of land. Thus Holy Bible has given man, a right to exploit the nature.”

The Climax of the film magnificently deals with the idea, ‘All Life is one’, illustrated by creatively imaginative animation suggesting that all life came from a single cell. The film pays a tribute to Charles Darwin by showing the footages of Natural History Museum, where after 150 years, the Statue of Charles Darwin has been relieved of its duty of being seated in a Cafeteria of Museum, idly watching science lovers munching on donuts and grabbing the sips of coffee, and now rightfully being placed at the centre hall of the museum (replacing the statue of his lifelong rival Richard Owen)

Rahul Bhole,

Foreshadow Pictures

swades_wethepeople@yahoo.co.in