THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Focus Features
Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade:  B+
Director:  James Marsh
Screenwriter:  Anthony McCarten, book by Jane Hawking
Cast:  Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Charlie Cox, David Thewlis
Screened at:  Universal, NYC, 10/16/14
Opens:  November 7, 2014

Believe it or not, even world class scientists have private lives—people they love, people they care for and who take care of them, children who like them regardless of their parents’ fame.  Was there even a Mrs. Galileo or a Mrs. Copernicus?  Should be we interested in knowing what Mrs. Einstein was like?  Mrs. Fermi?  Maybe.  That depends on whether the personal lives in question possess particular drama, which is surely true of the private life of Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most notable theoretical physicist in the world today, author of A Brief History of Time, which sold ten million copies.  What is unusual about the man, making his love life the focus of James Marsh’s “The Theory of Everything,” is that Hawking became the love interest of a Ms. Jane Wilde when they were in attendance at the university in Cambridge, England despite Stephen’s dorky appearance and awkwardness, but that’s not all.  As their relationship developed, Hawking received a diagnosis of MND, a neurological disorder similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease, and was given two years to live, and even then, Jane insisted on marrying him and making those two years the best of her man’s life.

Little did she know at that time that the two years would stretch on, allowing Hawking to live not only to age 23 but to 72.  He is still alive though almost totally paralyzed and able to communicate only through an ingenious machine.  Jane and Stephen were to be together through twenty-five years of marriage and to produce three children (some of his parts were not paralyzed).  “The Theory of Everything,” then, is the story of their lives together, going on through the end of their marriage and his nuptials later to a nurse who is hired to teach him better ways to communicate and Jane’s own marriage to the choirmaster of her church.

The film gains its drama from the ways that Jane helps her disabled husband, her life with him forming her memoir, Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.  Deepening the drama is the fact that Jane Hawking (Felicity Jones) is spiritually the opposite of Stephen (Eddie Redmayne).  She is a regular church-goer and a strong believer in God while he rejects what he calls the “supernatural,” though interestingly enough he is more agnostic than atheist as he does not wholly reject the idea of a creator.  Instead, Stephen speaks of the universe as it is expanding and contracting and delivers some ideas of the black hole which Anthony McCarten’s able script makes reasonably accessible for a lay audience in the theater.  What’s more Stephen’s interest lies wholly within his world of mathematics and theoretical physics while Jane is involved with medieval Spanish and French and links to Stephen’s interest in time by stating that she has often wanted to travel back a few centuries.

The film appears to highlight Eddie Redmayne’s chances for a best-actor Oscar or, at any rate, to hope he can have some luck with the many organizations that dish out awards for movies that open in 2014.  Redmayne conveys the steady deterioration of the disease at first by walking with a limp, then falling flat on his stomach inside the Cambridge grounds.  His toes point inward, his speech becomes unintelligible, his head droops and he has a disturbing smile on his wide lips.  At first he gets by on a pair of canes, then winds up in a wheelchair and is unable to eat without help from Jane or from the nurse, Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake), a woman who is strangely attracted to Hawking and tells his wife that she should worship the ground he walks on.  While Jane becomes increasingly wary about the growing attraction of his husband for Elaine, she is herself becoming involved with Jonathan Helyer (Charlie Cox), who conducts the church choir, and will eventually marry him as Stephen will marry Elaine.  David Thewlis delivers a stunning rendition of Stephen’s doctoral advisor, Dennis Sciama, a man who does not cut off his relationship at graduation time but sees Stephen speak before riveted audiences about his theories of the universe.

The biopic is rendered in a conventional manner, but the drama is heightened by Johann Johansson’s score and cinematographer Benoit Delhomme’s color.  As costumer, Steven Noble is said to supervise Redmayne’s look with 77 changes of clothing.

Rated PG-13.  123 minutes.  © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – B+
Acting – A-
Technical – B
Overall – B+