The Theory of Everything

Director: James Marsh
Screenplay: Anthony McCarten (based on the book Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking)
Stars: Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawking), Felicity Jones (Jane Hawking), Charlie Cox (Jonathan Hellyer Jones), Emily Watson (Beryl Wilde), Simon McBurney (Frank Hawking), David Thewlis (Dennis Sciama)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2014
Country: U.K.
The Theory of Everything
The Theory of EverythingThe Theory of Everything is first and foremost the portrait of a marriage. While it is sure to be described most often as a biographical film about the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), who suffers from the physically debilitating motor neuron disorder myotrophic lateral sclerosis (popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), the core of the film is not about his scientific discoveries, but rather his relationship with his first wife Jane (Felicity Jones). Screenwriter Anthony McCarten, who has been trying to get the film made for the better part of a decade, based his screenplay on Jane’s memoir Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen, and the film’s emotional arc hinges on their journey as a couple, which is why Hawking’s science often takes a backseat, relegated to quick montages of scribbling on blackboards or brief discussions about time, relativity, black holes, and the beginning and end of the universe. Given that Hawking’s work has already found excellent cinematic treatment in Errol Morris’s 1992 documentary A Brief History of Time, there was no need to make it the main focus, and McCarten wisely chose to focus more on Stephen and Jane’s relationship.

The film is a romance, but a clear-headed one, as McCarten and director James Marsh focus on the painful realities of how Hawking’s disease and growing fame slowly take their toll on what begins as an almost prototypical love story. Stephen and Jane are, first and foremost, a study in opposites. When they first meet as graduate students at Cambridge in the early 1960s—they literally see each other across a crowded room at a party—he is studying physics under his mentor Dennis Sciama (David Thewlis) and searching for a “simple, eloquent equation to explain everything,” while she is studying medieval literature. He is tall and gangly, with a foppish shock of thick hair that matches his thick, always askew black-rimmed glasses, while she is short and petite, elegant with a doll face that seems eternally young. He is immersed in his science, sure that numbers and equations can explain everything, particularly the absence of a god, while she is a devout member of the Church of England. Yet, despite all these differences, they are drawn together, and even after Stephen is diagnosed and told that he has less than two years to live, Jane insists on sticking with him and getting married. She assures him and his family that, while she may look frail, she is actually both strong and determined, qualities that will be essential to maintaining the relationship.

The rest of the film charts the development of their marriage over the years, as Stephen’s physical abilities slowly break down, leaving his limbs twisted and his body confined to a wheelchair. Yet, even though his body fails him, his mind remains strong, as does his personality and his sense of humor. In one of the film’s most moving moments, a doctor informs Stephen of his diagnosis, and his first questions is “What about the brain?” For Stephen, his mind is his life, which helps explain why he is able to persevere against the odds. As long as his thoughts remained sharp, his physical condition is inconsequential. Of course, that is a simplification, as the hurdle of conveying his thoughts becomes higher and higher as he loses the ability to write and can barely speak. Later in life, he suffers from pneumonia and loses his ability to speak completely, which leads to his using a computer interface that articulates speech for him (Hawking allowed the filmmakers to use his copyrighted electronic cadence, which is so immediately associated with him now).

And throughout all of this Jane sticks with him, sometimes with a sense of grim determination that all too obviously suggests the emotional and physical toll Stephen’s condition is taking on her. They have three children together, and Marsh conveys the joy of their lives with grainy, washed-out imagery of Stephen taking the children for rides on his wheelchair and going to the beach. There is joy amid the difficulties, but as Stephen’s physical condition worsens and his fame rockets, the difficulties become more prominent. When Jane meets a music teacher and choir director named Jonathan Hellyer Jones (Charlie Cox), there is an immediate sense of attraction, not because he is able bodied, but because he shares with her a love of music and a belief in God and because he offers her a respite from the difficulties involved in being a wife and mother on whose shoulders everything rests. Yet, despite both of them having clear feelings for each other, they remain plutonic friends, as Jane refuses to compromise the integrity of her relationship with Stephen (although there is an odd moment when Jonathan joins Jane on an overnight camping trip with the children while Stephen is lecturing out of the country that suggests the possibility of a sexual connection).

Marsh, an accomplished documentarian-turned-feature director whose last film, Shadow Dancer (2013), was a slow-burn drama set against “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (Lawless, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) give The Theory of Everything a heightened visual style that bathes virtually every sequence in an emotionally charged light. The early scenes between Stephen and Jane, which evoke a sense of innocence and open possibilities, are storybook pretty, while the scenes in which Stephen learns of his disease and begins coping with his physical breakdown have a harsh, bluish palette that suggests a loss of essence, as if the colors of the previous scenes have been lost. Marsh and Delhomme favor extreme shallow focus and blooms of light that give certain scenes an ethereal, dreamlike quality. And, while there are times when it feels like they’re pouring it on too thick, the heightened style is always balanced with the gritty emotional realities that give the film its true impact.

And this is where the performances come in. Eddie Redmayne, best known to American viewers as Marius in Les Misérables (2012), is a genuine revelation as Stephen Hawking. Oscar voters are sure to come calling, as it is all too well known that the award givers often favor performances that involve extreme physical transformations, which Redmayne does with absolute conviction. The manner in which he contorts his limbs and head and face to convey Stephen’s physical condition is utterly convincing, but the beauty of his performance is not in his rendition of disability, but rather in how he conveys Hawking’s spirit, wit, and intelligence through that disability. For much of the film’s second half Redmayne acts largely with his eyes, and he manages to convey more character, emotion, and conflict than most actors do with their entire bodies.

And, while Redmayne will likely get the lion’s share of attention for his performance, Felicity Jones’s portrayal of Jane cannot be underestimated, as her ability to convey the conflict between her character’s fortitude and her emotional and physical exhaustion is arguably the film’s foundation. Stephen is the celebrity, but it is Jane’s emotional journey that gives the film its shape and its substance, turning The Theory of Everything into a genuinely moving romance that doesn’t simplify or ignore the tragic reality that even the strongest love can be chipped away over the years until there is almost nothing left.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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All images copyright © Focus Features

Overall Rating: (3.5)




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