With the advent of awards season comes the inevitable
onslaught of true story biopics, often shoo-ins for acting, costuming, and set
design trophies. The Theory of Everything is precisely that kind of film,
exceptional in some regards but rather boilerplate in others – the result being
a film that ends up being anchored more by its performances than what it does
with them.Eddie Redmayne stars as Stephen Hawking in a film that follows Hawking’s career as a graduate student and his inspirational success as a cosmologist in the face of a debilitating motor neuron disease. Felicity Jones costars as Hawking’s wife Jane, torn between her love for her husband and the strain his physical limitations place on her.
I’ll begin by revisiting my claim that the Best Actor award is Michael Keaton’s to lose this year, thanks to his riveting turn in Birdman. Let’s amend that and say that at the very least he’s going to be facing some very stiff competition from Redmayne, who in this role undergoes the kind of physical transformation the Academy Awards love so very much. It’s a performance reminiscent of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, with the exception that Redmayne plays a man in transition and so has the perhaps more difficult task of balancing the two (he’s remarked in interviews that the film was shot out of sequence; contrast this to Day-Lewis remaining in-character off-camera).
Hawking, who lends his signature voice for the role, has commented that he found the resemblance uncanny, and indeed Redmayne is very compelling as Hawking. Mistaking the actor for the man is an easy misstep to make, so complete is Redmayne’s self-paralysis and his surprising ability to emote with only the movement of his eyes. There’s a scene very near the end of the film (no spoilers) in which Hawking tells his wife he’s going to America, and the depth Redmayne is able to communicate with his eyes in that moment is frankly astonishing.
Jones is quite good as well, but her performance understandably takes a backseat to how riveting Redmayne’s work is. What Jones adds to the film is a wonderfully emotional weight, the pain of the disease etched on Hawking’s body but fully depicted on Jane’s very existence. Jones carries the romantic plot of the film too, as Jane’s love for Stephen is tested against his illness. It’s the kind of film that makes you want to grab the hand the person sitting next to you and hold on until the end of time. The Theory of Everything isn’t a “grab your fella” kind of film, but a call for a more profoundly spiritual kind of love, one that survives even (spoilers for real life?) divorce.
Speaking of real life, the problem with The Theory of Everything, secured by strong performances such as it is, is that the film is unfortunately very paint-by-numbers when it comes to the true-story biopic formula. The film opens with the obligatory party sequence in which Stephen and Jane lock eyes; their courtship is engaging but somewhat preordained; the film ebbs and flows between successes and setbacks; the film ends with Hawking receiving the CBE and declining his knighthood. Where the film focuses on Stephen and Jane’s personal life, I would have much preferred more on Hawking’s insightful scientific contributions, which were much more unprecedented than the familiar romance we’re given.
Surprisingly, the film does a very capable job of presenting thirty-second versions of some of Hawking’s more weighty contributions to science, but the bulk of its attention is on the love story, which is gracefully told. The Theory of Everything rests on two very strong performances who tell a version of the story we’ve all heard a million times, but fortunately they tell it quite well.
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