THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2014)
Directed
by James Marsh
Focus
Features, PG-13, 123 minutes
* *
* *
Let me start with a
confession. Had I been in the producers’ room when writer Anthony McCarten pitched
a script for a love story based on the life of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking I
would have walked out muttering, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” That’s one of
the reasons I’m not a producer—that and the lack of tens of millions of dollars
of gambling money. A bit like the film’s
protagonist, The Theory of Everything succeeds
despite the odds against it. To add to its improbable triumph, the film is
skillfully (if a bit straight forwardly) directed by James Marsh, whose
previous credits consist mostly of made-for-TV films, documentaries, and the
offbeat Wisconsin Death Trip (1999).
The story begins at
Cambridge University in 1963, where the brash and carefree Hawking (Tom Prior
for young Stephen, then Eddie Redmayne) is making his mark through a
combination of bluster and brilliance, the latter mostly half-baked until
structured by don and mentor Professor Dennis
Sciama (David Thewlis). Hawking is what you might expect of a physics
geek—gawky, socially gauche, and prone to pretension. That begins to change
when he meets future first wife Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones) also brilliant,
though a faithful Anglican studying Romance languages and literature. The
sequence is chronological: courtship, early onset of ALS, marriage, care giving,
family, fame, marital strain. By the time the Hawkings’ second (of three) children
is born in 1970, their romance is unconventional to say the least. ALS is a
horrendous degenerative disease that renders its victims increasingly unable to
control basic motor functions such as walking, writing, speaking, or swallowing.
Most stricken with ALS suffer their first symptoms when they are older than 50 and
most pass within three years—remarkably, Hawking (72) has now lived with ALS
for 50 years.
The
Theory of Everything references Hawking’s desire to explain the
beginning of the Universe. As such, the film touches upon his theories of
singularity, black holes, radiation, and gravitational singularity. Hawking is
renowned for his marriage of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and
quantum mechanics. But don’t worry—you won’t need a Ph.D. in physics to get any
of this. One of the film’s virtues is rendering complex scientific ideas in lay
terms. Plus, the key to Hawking’s thought centers on how he factored time into
his equations. Time, in fact, is an un-credited actor in this film. If the Big
Bang created the Universe, the mechanics and mathematics of time suggest it
will end much the same way. But this film is about the microcosm not the macro,
and we watch as Stephen’s relationship with Jane moves more toward a final whimper,
not a massive explosion even though the disintegrating impact of Stephen’s
illness appears as an inevitable arc. In like fashion, Jane’s romance with
good-hearted Jonathan Hellyer-Jones (Charlie Cox) and Stephen’s for caregiver
(and second wife) Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake) unfold languidly in ways that
parallel Hawking’s doubts about his earlier conclusions about the Big Bang. The
film’s wonderful ending sequence similarly makes us rethink how time unfolds.
All of this is to say that The Theory of Everything is a romance,
not a science film. At times you’ll wonder if the Universe is lubricated with
schmaltz, but luckily these excesses are few in number. Mostly we muse upon the
age-old question of what any of us would do for love, and the film certainly
takes some of heroic/angelic luster from Hawking. His disease is to be pitied,
but not his bouts of superciliousness, his egoism, or his horn-dog Hustler-induced love of pornography. The
film is very well acted. Critics have, of course, praised Redmayne’s
performance and he rightly deserves props for the sheer physicality of
portraying a man who is losing his own. In my view, though, Ms. Jones gives a
superior performance as she must convince us she is a simmering volcano that
will not allow herself to explode. As in all British productions, all the
secondary and minor characters are filled by skilled actors rather than shiny
faces. Special praise goes to Thewlis, a much underappreciated actor, and to
Cox, who plays the man-in-waiting to hangdog perfection.
Just so you know, this is
another “based on a true story” tale
that isn’t literally true. Jane, for instance, did not abandon her career to be Stephen’s nurse; she lived in London
during the week, finished her Ph.D., and is now a professor. Nor did Hawking
find his soul mate in Mason—the two quietly divorced in 2006. Take this film
for what it is—a romance that, even when it goes over the top, makes us
contemplate love as more than swelling music and unalloyed bliss. –Rob Weir
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