Film Review: The Theory of Everything

Courtesy of Abbeygate Cinema, Editor Tony Diver reviews The Theory of Everything.

In many ways, The Theory of Everything is a misleading title for the biopic of Stephen Hawking. Not least because his theory, which primarily concerns itself with the nature of black holes and ‘space-time singularities’, is not about ‘everything’. Academically, the film tracks Hawking’s study of cosmology – starting with his PhD thesis and culminating in his world-famous book, A Brief History of Time. It shows how he thought about the world, how he discussed the world, how he wrote about the world, and how he changed the world.

But there is another reason. The film is not really about his theory. It is not a screen adaptation of the pioneering theoretical physics that Hawking produced. It is the story of a man, his wife, and his lifelong struggle with motor neurone disease. It is told not from the perspective of the maths and science which dominated much of his life, but the human perspective of his relationships. It is a triumph.

The narrative begins with a charming depiction of Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) at 21. Having just left Oxford – where he convinced his tutors to give him a first class degree so he could go to Cambridge and get out of their hair – he is lazy, awkward and brilliant. His tutor (David Thewlis) is concerned that he has not chosen the subject of his PhD, having already started the course, and his friend Brian asks whether “you are aware that you have voluntarily embarked on a PhD in theoretical physics?”

It is (somewhat predictably) the meeting with his future wife that changes his academic path. Jane – played by the superb Felicity Jones – is the quiet, churchgoing arts student who is to dominate the film hereafter. As they fall in love and he explains that he wants to ‘reverse time’ to ‘go back the very beginning of the universe’, he becomes visibly clumsier and is eventually diagnosed with MND.

From then on, the story of Hawking’s journey to becoming a doctor and professor gives way to something altogether more human. The strain on the marriage of the couple is visible, as Jane asks a friend (Charlie Cox) to help her care for her husband. His condition worsens, and the decline in his health soon warrants the use of the (now renowned) electric wheelchair and voice synthesiser. The couple begin to grow apart as their once-feverent love cannot scale the physical barrier of his disease.

Redmayne’s performance is breathtaking. The inherent comparison to real life that any biopic presents is difficult, but hours of training both with sufferers of MND and with Hawking himself allow Redmayne to emulate him perfectly. The emotional hurdles of Hawking’s condition are a central part of the film, but Redmayne is able to deliver a performance which is both convincing and moving.

Crucially, this is not a film about a scientist who dreams up a fabulous theory. It is not even a film about a scientist with MND who dreams up a fabulous theory. It is about Stephen and Jane Hawking, and the way that their marriage copes with both crippling disease and an extraordinary mind. Hawking tells us that ‘there should be no boundary to human endeavour’. It is The Theory of Humankind.

 

 

In partnership with Abbeygate Cinema, Bury St. Edmunds.