Saturday, November 29, 2014

The Theory of Everything (2014) review


Out of all of the famous scientists that have ever lived, from Albert Einstein to Kip Thorne (who just had a movie based around his scientific observations come out in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’) Stephen Hawking is no doubt one of the first that comes to mind. After all, he was one of the two leading minds, along with Roger Penrose, on ‘gravitational singularity theorems’, predicted the concept of black hole radiation, and perhaps most importantly explored the union of the ‘theory of relativity’ and ‘quantum mechanics’. But at the same time, Hawking’s own life is quite fascinating given the fact that in his 20’s he was diagnosed with a motor neuron disease connected to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease as well as being the main cause for awareness behind all of those Ice Bucket Challenges you no doubt saw a lot of this past summer) and that story is the focus of ‘The Theory of Everything’. More specifically, this film is based on the book ‘Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen’ by his first wife Jane Wilde as the film not only focuses on his life, but their relationship and how she stood by him as this disease slowly took over his life. And with some terrific and truly Oscar-worthy performances from leads Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, ‘The Theory of Everything’ is a well-directed and moving biopic on the lives of both one of the most famous men in the entire world and the woman who was always there for him in times of crisis.

The film begins in 1962 as Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) begins his tenure as a graduate student at Cambridge studying cosmology where he quickly makes quite the impression with his teachers, specifically physicist Dennis Sciama (David Thewlis). While at a college party, he meets Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), an arts major, and soon after they fall in love. But both of their lives take a serious detour one day after Stephen, who begins to show signs of clumsiness, ends up taking a nasty fall at school. At the hospital, he learns that he has a motor neuron disease similar to ALS which affect his muscles, resulting in them slowly degrading away. Because there is nothing that the doctors can do about it, it is projected that he only has two years to live. However, Jane promises to help him get through it driven by their love for each other and they end up getting married. With her love and support, Stephen fights to overcome his disability as he also continues to make quite the impression amongst his fellow physicists in the field of cosmology even as the disease slowly but surely eats away at him to the point where, after a near-death experience with pneumonia, he ends up losing his voice due to a tracheotomy resulting in him having to use a computerized voice to speak.

So I’ll admit that while I am familiar with Stephen Hawking, I admittedly didn’t know that much about him (nor do I know anything about any of the science in most of his work but don’t worry that science isn’t the main focus of this film) before seeing this. Having now seen this film, I can say that his story was a truly intriguing tale. I mean, this was a man who was given only two years to live and yet he managed to fight on even though it ended up resulting in him losing many things, namely the abilities to walk and talk. But of course, there’s more to this story. It’s also a tale of romance from the perspective of both Stephen and his wife Jane and we really see her spirit and determination supporting Stephen through the toughest moments of his life. But even then she does have her limits as I’m sure many will probably have in situations like this. The film does a great job at balancing their roles in the overall story meaning that while this is technically about Stephen Hawking’s life, Jane is as big a part of the story as he is. From an emotional standpoint, you do find yourselves very much invested in their relationship and sympathize with them when they both hit their own low points. All in all, this is a very well-polished film. The direction from James Marsh is solid as is the cinematography by Benoit Delhomme and the score by Johann Johannsson, resulting in a very nice-looking film backed up by a nice musical score.

But the key to this film is the performances from its two leads and I can safely say that after seeing this film that Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are no doubt going to be front-runners for Best Actor and Best Actress at this year’s Oscars. Redmayne disappears into the role of Hawking perfectly and handles the transformation that Hawking went through incredibly well. Equally excellent here is Jones as Jane who does a phenomenal job at conveying both Jane’s strength and emotions in the key moments of the film. And as I noted earlier, because the film makes sure to balance out these two roles in the story, there’s never a time where one of them tries to outshine the other; they work off each other and are both superb. Of course, chemistry is key to making a film romance work and that is very much the case here. The two have excellent chemistry which really makes the relationship between Stephen and Jane feel very much genuine. The film does have a solid supporting cast as well, including Charlie Cox (AKA the new Daredevil for you Marvel fans) as Jonathan Jones, a musician who befriends Stephen and Jane, the latter of whom ended up marrying him after divorcing Stephen in 1995 (and no I don’t really consider that a spoiler given that this is a true story), and David Thewlis as Stephen’s physics professor at Cambridge but at the end of the day this film belongs to Redmayne and Jones.

‘The Theory of Everything’ is definitely one of the best films of this year as it offers a sometimes sad but also extremely uplifting look at how Stephen Hawking managed to overcome the disease that was predicted to take his life in just two years with the love of support of his wife Jane. It’s a well-crafted film that benefits greatly from its direction, writing, cinematography, and its score. And even if you don’t really understand a lot of the science that is talked about in this film… don’t worry you’re not alone and even then, that’s not actually the main focus of the film. Instead it’s about the relationship between Stephen and Jane. And at the end of the day, the best elements of this film are the Oscar-worthy performances from Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones in the lead roles of Stephen and Jane, respectively. Their chemistry is superb and both do a fantastic job at portraying these two and the struggles that they both overcame in dealing with Stephen’s ALS. It’s been said that this year’s Oscars are going to be pretty packed in regards to the acting categories but I do hope that both Redmayne and Jones earn Oscar nominations for their work here. In fact, I’d say it would be a genuine travesty if they didn’t get nominated because these are easily two of the best performances I’ve seen this year.


Rating: 4.5/5

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