The Theory of Everything
I don’t know when we started demanding more from the biopic as a genre, less a “greatest hits” whitewash of a life, and more a “warts and all” depiction of the lives onscreen, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have a film like James Marsh’s “The Theory of Everything” if that evolution hadn’t happened. The film has the feel of a light, predictable biographical drama, but it’s anything but as we see Stephen Hawking transform into a brash, lazy student to one of the most brilliant scientists of the modern age within the prism of two key personal developments: his relationship with Jane Wilde, and the onset of motor neuron disease that has ravaged his body, and left his all but paralyzed, speaking and typing through a computer, for the past 30 years. This film should be a snoozer, but screenwriter Anthony McCarten, adapting Jane’s book, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. and director Marsh (an Oscar-winner for his great documentary, “Man on Wire”) bring warmth and emotional heft to the film’s biopic trappings.
I’m a bit late in seeing the film (as of this writing, it’s mere days until the film’s Oscar fates will be decided), but it’s such a lovely piece of work that a few things deserve to be said about it. The first thing is, Eddie Redmayne completely rattles my thinking about the Best Actor race as Professor Hawking, going to great lengths to inhabit the great physicist from both an outward look (his physical transformation is astonishing, and heartbreaking) and inward, with Hawking’s wicked wit and brash ego on full display. The obvious thing would be to chalk this up to makeup and actorly tics, but no: this is full-blown commitment to a character, to getting everything right, and paying tribute to a legendary personality in modern history. Redmayne is transformative and unforgettable in the role, and it’s one of the great performances of a real-life individual in history. He is matched, beat for beat, by Felicity Jones as Jane, who falls for Stephen almost immediately, and courageously stands by him as his health deteriorates, and eventually makes it impossible for him to be a partner in the marriage, helping her with their three children. She finds solace in a friendship with a local church organist (Charlie Cox), but that only complicates things as she and Stephen grow further apart, even when Jane has to make a critical decision to keep Stephen on life support after he falls ill with pneumonia, with the alternative being a tracheotomy, which will end his ability to speak permanently. There’s a very delicate dance of emotions from the moment Stephen learns of his illness (and is given two years to live) on, and Jones and Redmayne make it an unforgettable journey of the heart, aided by a thrilling score by Jóhann Jóhannsson that sounds old fashioned, but is crafted in a very modern way that gives the film a fine emotional roadmap. It doesn’t avoid all of the trappings inherent in the genre, but “The Theory of Everything” is definitely a cut above your typical biopic, in that it makes you consider matters of the mind, and the heart, on equal footing. That doesn’t happen often.
