Saturday, November 29, 2014

The Theory of Everything

Plot: This is a biopic of Prof. Stephen Hawking's wife Jane (Felicity Jones). It isn't about Stephen's (Eddie Redmayne's) struggle to be a super-successful physicist with Lou Gehrig's disease.

It shows their courtship, Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) getting sick, Jane taking care of Stephen, Stephen getting sicker, Jane having babies while taking care of Stephen, Stephen making a discovery, Jane flirting with the choir director, Jane having another baby,  Stephen flirting with his nurse, and more. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: See this movie for the physical acting as Stephen drifts from physical fitness to physical disability, and that Eddie Redmayne does so masterfully. It starts slowly as foreshadowing, then trembling, and finally he falls . . . then wonderful scenes of Redmayne hobbling on two canes. We see and feel the turning point when Stephen sits down on wheel chair, and again when he begins to use the computer to speak. 

The first love triangle starts slowly and it snuck up on me. After that however, the movie just drifts for another 45 minutes until the not very definitive end. After all Stephen is still alive, and the movie had to peter out at the end, didn't it?

Cast: Eddie Redmayne. Felicity Jones

Directed by: James Marsh, based on the book by Jane Hawking

Rating:  2.5 stars: The great physical acting by Redmayne, and the facial acting from Jones balance out the weak ending. 


More: The soundtrack was pretty and melodic. Very nice. I bought two tracks. There were a few painterly visuals from director Marsh.

Even More:
Jane Wilde Hawking and Stephen Hawking in 1990
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