The Theory of Everything

This film wasn’t quite what I hoped it was going to be, but it was still an incredibly impressive tour-de-force of acting, delicate filmmaking and romanticised Britishness.

Aiming for biopic as well as Oscar-friendly study of a degenerative disease, the film is a little light on the science and heavy on possibly the strangest love story I’ve ever seen on screen. And while I’m all for something a little different from the average romantic fare, this particularly messy real-life tangle of broken relationships, infidelity and under-developed second partners left me rather uncomfortable – largely because the film attempted to frame it all as rather admirable, romantic and even beautiful with a final platonic reconciliation. When in fact it was a deeply sad study in love not lasting, falling apart and being unable to withstand challenges. I don’t mind a biopic that shows love going deeply wrong, but I found myself rather resenting the attempts to portray a deeply broken relationship as something natural and ultimately healthy – because greater things than the relationship were part of these lovers’ lives – rather unsettling.

But this is after all a biopic about two people who are still alive and will be watching the film, which is bizarre enough. Popular recently, certainly, with the likes of The Queen and The Special Relationship, but those were focused on professional lives, not a deeply personal relationship. And some reviews, presumably based on familiarity with the source material, claim this film warped the real story for the sake of more palatable drama, which for such an odd love story seems the wrong approach. It’s quite well-known that there was a lot of anger and confrontation when the marriage broke down, which wasn’t conveyed here – and it’s not even made clear that Hawking remarries his sultry nurse.

Which is why the film I would have rather seen would have been much more focused on Hawking as a professional, and how his motor neurone disease affected his work as a physicist. The man is after all most famous for his books for a popular audience. The film has a fair crack at explaining the concept of time beginning at the Big Bang, and Hawking radiation, but I’d much rather it at least mentioned the information paradox and Hawking’s eventual rather unconvincing announcement that it can all be explained by parallel universes. On the other hand, I was grateful that Dennis Sciama – played by David Thewlis – was insistent on underpinning the theorizing with mathematics.

I felt quite privileged at some personal connections with this film – and not just because I have an inkling I was in Oliver! with Eddie Redmayne. I saw Stephen Hawking once or twice in Cambridge outside Emmanuel – or was it Gonville and Caius? And it was fun to see Cambridge looking so pretty, even if it did all have to be that accursed St. John’s.

What really has to be admired here, though, is Redmayne’s towering performance. He was excellent in My Week with Marilyn and likeable in Les Misérables, but this is certainly the role that will define him, and guarantees stardom for many, many years. His performance as Hawking had to be perfect, as if the physical impersonation was anything short of precise it could have looked like mockery. His face suits Hawking’s remarkably well, but nonetheless the close study of his facial tics and ailments was both incredibly hard to pull off and also what was admirable. Redmayne embodies the progression of the disease extremely well, including in loss of speech, and never does the impersonation come across as anything but respectful and sympathetic. There is a certain taboo to an able-bodied actor portraying a man disfigured by a disease with such a physical manifestation, but the sympathetic direction and Redmayne’s superb performance make it work.

It of course overshadows everything else, but Redmayne’s bravura performance doesn’t prevent Felicity Jones’ being very impressive. Her stern yet loving performance and the increasing complexity of Jane Hawking’s feelings are portrayed delicately and without melodrama. Funny thinking back to when she played Ethel in the television adaptation of The Worst Witch. I also actually rather liked her bringing God into not only Hawking’s theories, but his everyday life – even if the pay-off felt excessively like the writer felt he was walking on eggshells and Hawking’s views were rather vague.

Awareness of Motor Neurone is higher than it has ever been, thanks to last year’s Ice Bucket Challenge, but I fancy that this film will show more of the severity of the condition and how difficult it makes lives than a thousand celebrities getting soaked. Even if, as we all know, Hawking has triumphantly defied the disease into old age.