Theory of Everything, 2014
I thought that this was really fantastic, and I am not usually a fan of biographies.
The Theory of Everything tells the story of Stephen Hawking, beginning with his university life, through his ALS diagnosis, into his married life with his wife Jane, and ending with his international fame.
Part of the problem that I often have with biographies is that in their desire to tell a whole life story, they turn a person's life into a series of bullet-points/highlights. By focusing in on a select several years, the movie is able to dive deeper into the characters and make them feel much more real.
The stellar point of the film is undoubtedly Eddie Redmayne's performance as Hawking. I always have feelings of trepidation when non-disabled actors take on roles of people with disabilities. I've worked for over 15 years with students with a range of disability, and I really dislike it when actors reduce disability to a series of tics, or when movies revel in playing up the most "entertaining" aspect of a disability (like when a character with Tourette's walks around spewing profanity when this is not often the presentation of the disability).
Redmayne does something really special with his portrayal of Hawking. In the scenes before Hawking begins to decline, we get to see Hawking's soft-spoken intelligence and his eccentricity and his humor. It means that when the ALS begins to take away his outward expression, we can still sense and decode the emotions and thoughts of the character. His physical portrayal is exceptional. This goes along with the film's general approach to the story, in that the film doesn't strain to "prove" how smart Stephen is. A handful of scenes get the point across and the physics becomes part of who he is, not the sole element of his identity.
To zoom back out, it's very interesting that the film is based on a book by Jane Hawking, Stephen's wife. I was very impressed with the balance that the film gave to both sides of the marriage, and the story is almost equally Jane's. The love between the two of them is very strong, but the film shows the way that both of them at times feel left out or isolated. Stephen cannot put his arms around his wife, and the flip side is that Jane doesn't have a husband who can embrace her. The film isn't interested in taking sides--it just observes the way that these two people negotiate a really challenging situation. Both partners find themselves drawn to people outside the marriage (Jane to her choir director, Stephen to a speech therapist). The film doesn't condemn either of them for these attractions, and it's integrated in as part of the struggle.
I really enjoyed the way that the film presented Stephen's theories. It's not about him having a series of "Aha!" moments. It's about how his ideas about existence and certainty mix and mingle with his own life. His work focuses on the boundary edges of the universe, yet he finds himself restricted more and more by the boundary of his own body. At the same time, his original prognosis was that he would only live two years, and over and over again he defies the odds to survive various medical calamities.
On a personal note, I worked for 2.5 years with a child who had severe complications from cerebral palsy. She was a wheelchair user and had less control over her body than Hawking. I appreciated that the film showed the harsh reality of assisting someone in a wheelchair. (Are electric wheelchairs nice? Sort of. They weigh a TON and it's so hard to get them up stairs or even up on a curb). Stephen and Jane have several kids, and at one point a character says off-hand "I don't know how Jane does it." LIKE SERIOUSLY!!! HOW DID SHE DO IT?!?! Three kids and also assisting an adult? The fact that almost no one in their circle seems to offer regular help was even more baffling. This is where you see some old-fashioned sexism come into play, as Jane is expected to put aside her own academic pursuits and act as a parent, a partner, and a caretaker.
The last thing I'll mention about this film (which I obviously really loved) is that it looks really great. The colors are wonderfully saturated and there was almost a starburst effect at times that I adored. There are a few moments where the film slips into a first-person perspective from Stephen's point of view and they were really effective.
This was a refreshing, smart, and immersive approach to a biographical film, and I loved it.
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