Inheritance of Wind

Having watched Jon Stewart debate David Burton on The Daily Show, I decided that it was time to take in that movie based on the ol' Scopes Monkey Trial.

And a damn fine movie it is! Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, Dick York, Harry Morgan, lots of big name stars here. And extremely fantastic acting! Some scenes were just so brilliant, you had to applaud them. This was an excellently made movie.

Although, of course, I'm biased about the subject matter. There are some liberties, as you would assume for a movie, taken with the story. Scopes knew what he was getting into, indeed went ahead with teaching evolution because it would lead to a trial that would bring the 'no teaching evolution' law into the court. And, yes, he was found guilty, because he was. No getting around that he did indeed break the law. And the judge fined him $100. And the intention was to take the case to a higher level... however, the judge wasn't allowed to fine that high ($25 was the limit he could assign), so the case was thrown out, and instead of being any kind of test for evolution, all that happened was that schools shied away completely from the topic for many years... no win there...

Not that the movie is presenting a huge intended win for evolution either. The outcome is more grim than that. There is a brilliant speech about man as a thinking animal, however they are up against a very fundamentalist version of Christianity, and that can easily be made to look foolish (although there are still many staunch believers of that version causing just as much trouble today). Theistic evolution wouldn't see this as a problem... *sigh* if only theistic evolutionists weren't promoting creationism in school boards...

So while what this movie presents isn't over by any means, this is still a great picture, that should be seen as a worthy production aside from the content. Definitely check it out.

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