Love, Sacrifice and Black Holes: THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

by Le Anne Lindsay, Editor

My first thought, well not first, but second or third thought after seeing The Theory of Everything was –  how could someone all crippled up with ALS, who can’t even feed himself, have a better sex life than me!?!

Stephen Hawking’s, (Sheldon Cooper’s idol for any Big Bang Theory fans) life is proof that our sheer mental will, along with the love of a good woman, can work miracles. Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) after tripping through the ivory courtyards of Cambridge University; Hawking, played with great honesty by Eddie Redmayne, is told he has this degenerative motor neurons affliction and is given 2 years to live.  I can’t help but wonder why at that moment he didn’t decide to put his amazing brainpower behind finding a cure?  As it turned out, he certainly had the time, imagine being told you won’t see your 25th birthday and then still be here at 72 – this is a story in and of itself – you add in the fact that he’s a brilliant physicist, able to prove and disprove theories about the very existence of our planet through space and time, and you’ve got an amazing movie, right? … Well, yes and no.

The movie is mainly based on the memoirs of his incredibly stalwart wife, Jane (Felicity Jones) whose performance is on par with Redmayne’s. I am awestruck by a woman who would commit to marrying a man already showing signs of major debilitation, and raise 3 children, basically without help for years, while caring for her husband night and day. Yet, somehow, it’s not quite enough to keep such a long movie going.  Not even when adding in the carefully presented affair Jane begins with choirmaster/family friend/caretaker Jonathan (Charlie Cox).

In many ways The Theory of Everything is reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, so it makes me want to go back and see why that movie seems to have more movement, no pun intended. Still, director James Marsh (Project Nim – click for T&T post) has shot a beautiful movie with a lot of outdoor scenes and color palettes to match the changing times (Cinematography Benoît Delhomme). The story is also a wonderful tribute to this incredibly resilient family, and ultimately you come away with a whole new perspective on romance, commitment and love. T &T’s LAMB Score 3 outta 5
– Le Anne Lindsay, Editor 

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Eddie Redmayne, James Marsh, Felicity Jones

CS: Another thing I had a question about was that there was a flashback rewind, and I was curious about that decision. Was that in the screenplay?

Marsh: The idea was there in one form, but I had to change it a lot as I was shooting so I shot a lot of stuff deliberately for that rewind. The discussion was finding out how to do it, and the idea being, how it came to me, was that we were going to give him back what we’ve taken away from him. We couldn’t do that in real life, but the idea was to remind ourselves the journey we’ve taken as an audience through this story, and giving Stephen back the things he’s lost and reverse time in a way that we could do this. But of course, that’s the theme in the film, the whole idea of time and its reversal and the black hole. Mathematically, I think it’s possible that time can reverse, in a mathematical sense of the black hole. So that all felt thematic, also, it was a way of ending the film, to go back to the beginning, I guess…READ MORE

Eddie Redmayne with Stephen Hawking

CS:  I was curious whether you’d met him or if you wanted to meet him beforehand. I’d think that would make it even more intimidating to play him.

Redmayne: I was lucky enough to go to university at Cambridge and I studied history of art… which I had to admit to him [Stephen Hawking] when I met him. I’d seen Stephen and the iconic silhouette of the wheelchair, and even overheard his voice. I knew kind of it was – went into black hole theory and science at the age of 12. What was a revelation for me is when I read this script and realized that there was this whole other world of obstacles thrown at him and an amazing kind of unconventional love story at the focus of it. Also, the humor. This man, when you meet him, is one of the funniest men I’ve ever met…READ MORE