A Smart Movie That Questions Evolution (Yes, It’s Possible!)

Michael Pitt stars as a molecular biologist in I Origins. Photo: Jelena Vukotic/Courtesy Sundance Institute

The words “molecular biology thriller” don’t come up a lot when describing movies, but director Mike Cahill’s I Origins aims to be different. The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week, revolves around around the concept of ”irreducible complexity,” the argument put forth by proponents of intelligent design who believe some biological systems are too intricate to have evolved naturally. It’s not an easy concept to cram into a suspense thriller, but Cahill had a guiding principle: Make a movie compelling enough that even an evolutionary biologist or staunch atheist might stop and ponder.

In the film, a young molecular biology Ph.D. student named Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is researching the development of the eyes — organs often cited by intelligent design proponents as examples of “irreducible complexity” – in an attempt to put the argument to rest forever. In the process, he discovers that eyes may not be the unique fingerprints we think they are, and may even have deeper and more ethereal purposes. The story is told from the perspective of Ian, a scientist and skeptic who was partly inspired by one of the most noted evolutionary biologists and staunch atheists in popular culture, The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins.

“I really got into Richard Dawkins [while making this movie] and kind of based the character off of him,” said Pitt. “If you could you convince Dawkins, then you will convince everybody. So we were setting up a really big challenge.”

(Spoiler Alert: Some spoilers for I Origins follow.)

Will I Origins succeed in this quest? Eh, probably not. In a funny observation on Film.com, James Rocchi wrote, “at one point, Ian reads a Richard Dawkins book, and you can imagine Dawkins popping into the scene and saying to Cahill, like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, ‘You clearly know nothing about my work…’”

I Origins isn’t truly out to scientifically challenge the famed evolutionary biologist on the merits of his work, however, only to use them as a conceptual framework for exploring a fantastical metaphysical possibility — a riff on the eyes being windows to the soul. It’s believed that the irises of the eyes are as unique as fingerprints, but after Ian meets a Sofi (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), a girl with unusually beautiful eyes, he discovers that she may have an eye-twin somewhere out there. It’s a finding that leads the character to question if there really could be a god in the gaps.

“My role models are scientists, my favorite people in the world are scientists, I’m obsessed with scientists. I think what they do is magnificent,” Cahill said. “I also hold in the highest respect people in various religious communities. I’m [just] interested in where those intersect.” In addition to Dawkins, Cahill also cites the Dalai Lama’s The Universe in a Single Atom, and the works of Carl Sagan as influences on his work.

The intersection of science and faith is a ripe topic for discussion – and has been for quite some time – but it’s a topic that doesn’t get tackled much in Hollywood, especially not in narrative films. In recent memory only Prometheus and Contact, come to mind. So even though occasionally Cahill’s film treads on the sacred ground of trying to turn skeptics into soul-searchers, his film is to be commended for trying to do something most films don’t. Sci-fi spiritual journeys aren’t everyone’s jam, but if you’re into it, I Origins ruminates on the divide between faith and science in a way that feels strangely intimate.

Despite the recent announcement that the film had picked up the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, an award for science-themed movies, critical unanimity seems unlikely. According to varying reviews  out at Sundance, where the film was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight on Monday, I Origins was either a movie “weighed down by drab scene work and inelegant storytelling” or “the best science vs. faith film since Contact.”

Pummeling the depths of scientific and spiritual debate isn’t the easiest thing to do in a film – and it’ll never ensure a populist slam-dunk – but Cahill isn’t into changing hearts and minds so much as he is sparking conversation and perhaps shifting the needles of everyone’s perspective, even if only temporarily.

“I like when the paradigm we live in is threatened a little bit,” Cahill said. “The status quo is completely arbitrary; it’s completely arbitrary that we are organized as a species in the way that we are organized and to a large extent we’re organized by a narrative that’s arbitrary. It’s fun to disrupt that narrative.”