Film: The Theory of Everything
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Charlie Cox, Simon McBurney, Maxine Peake, Harry Lloyd
Director: James Marsh
The wife is a believer. He is not. She is a poetry lover. He, a devotee of science. This doesn’t stop them from being happy, very happy together. His name is Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne, Les Misérables), hers is Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones). They meet as undergrads art Cambridge and it is love at first sight, a love so strong that Jane marries him knowing well that his illness (a motor neuron disease) will test her ability to cope. It doesn’t not for a long, very long time. And when it does, it is hard to be judgmental.
Based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen—the movie scripted by Andrew McCarten begins as healthy, Wagner and chess loving young cosmologist is trying to work on a doctoral thesis. His ultimate aim (as in every other scientist’s) is to come up with a Theory of Everything.
The conflict between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity lead him to his thesis, and its groundbreaking theory of black holes. Her speech resonates from the Bible, he tells her in one scene, that the study of the origins of the universe, is “a kind of religion for intelligent thinkers.” But then, he falls sick, very sick. His sickness is an impediment.
The doctors give him two years to live. They were wrong. “Your thoughts won’t change,” a doctor tells him, “but eventually no one will know what they are.” He was wrong too.
The Hawkings have children, and Stephen goes on to think, theorise and write, despite his disability, with her unstinting support. A character says God is “on the endangered species list.” To which someone retorts, “I expect He’ll cope.”Jane is Stephen’s rock, but when she gets stressed out eventually and unable to cope, a chorister (Charlie Cox) and a nurse Elaine (Maxine Peake), step in. Jane would later marry the chorister. Stephen retains his quirky humour (and love of Penthouse mags), Felicity Jones is strong. But Eddie Redmayne is brilliant.
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Ronita Torcato
