The Theory of Everything (2014)
Cast includes: Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn), Felicity Jones (The Invisible Woman), David Thewlis (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azhaban), Emily Watson (War Horse), Simon McBurney (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Director: James Marsh (Man on Wire, Shadow Dancer)
Genre: Drama | Biography based on a book by Jane Hawking (123 minutes)
“We don’t have to stay,” Jane’s friend says. It’s 1963… a party at Cambridge… and the guys are all scientists… not a promising lot. But Jane notices Stephen Hawking across the room… “He’s weird,” says the friend. But Jane is taken by his warm smile and the twinkle in his eyes, albeit behind filthy glasses. Hello, says Jane. Hello, says Stephen. Science, says Stephen. Arts, says Jane. Stephen’s “a cosmologist. I study the marriage of space and time… hoping to fine a unified theory that explains the origin of everything.” Instead of being turned off, Jane finds the “weird” young man intriguing. And he enjoys her sense of poetry. Jane writes her number on a napkin. Stephen is so smitten that he barely bothers to work on the 10 questions from Professor Sciama… “Each more impenetrable than the last.” Yet Stephen is the only one who works out any of the answers… “I only did 9.” Sciama takes Hawking under his wing… “You never know where the next great breakthrough is going to come from. Or from whom.”
The PhD years are amazing… a wonderful girlfriend and a chance to be on the cutting edge of “space-time singularity.” His general clumsiness is… well, that’s just Stephen… until the fall that lands him in the hospital. After a complete work up, there’s a diagnosis of “motor neuron disease… Lou Gehrig’s disease… 2 years to live.” Stephen has a complete reversal of outlook. His customary cheerful outlook is gone… he’s just waiting to die. He won’t see Jane, and when she finally does get to see him, he has one word for her… “Go.” But she doesn’t go. “I love you and I want us to be together for as long as we have,” she says. Stephen realizes he wants to make the most of whatever time he has. He chooses the subject for his thesis… “Time.” Stephen’s parents want what Stephen wants, of course, but they’re not sure about his marriage to Jane. She doesn’t “look like a very strong person.” But she insists that they’re going to “fight this illness together.” Still Frank Hawking warns her, “This is going to be a very heavy defeat.”
Frank is only half right… about the “heavy” part. Stephen passes the two-year mark. In fact, he passes the 50-year mark. No one is quite sure why, but they’re not going to question the victories. Stephen becomes a world-famous physicist even before his bestselling book, “A Brief History of Time”. The film gives us a brief history of Stephen Hawking… although it’s very brief and overly simplified. I suspect the filmmakers were concerned about the potential of the film becoming too heavy for mainstream audiences. They chose to approach the subject matter in a filmmaking style we typically see in holiday-season romances. Despite the fact that the central character has a degenerative terminal illness, the score is romantic, the colors are glowingly rich, and they make ample use of soft focus. The one aspect of the film that makes it worth seeing is the outstanding performance by Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking. He not only takes on the physical characteristics of Hawking’s disease… he does it in stages, going from barely noticeable to nearly complete paralysis. And he does all this with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, albeit behind filthy glasses… “defying every expectation, both scientific and personal.”
2 popped kernels
A brief (and overly simplified) history of Stephen Hawking
Popcorn Profile
Rated: PG-13
Audience: Grown-ups
Gender Style: Neutral
Distribution: Mainstream Wide Release
Mood: Upbeat
Tempo: Cruises Comfortably
Visual Style: High-End Production
Nutshell: Stephen Hawking
Language: True to life
