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
No comments:
Post a Comment