OVP: The Theory of Everything (2014)

Film: The Theory of Everything (2014)
Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Maxine Peake, David Thewlis, Emily Watson
Director: James Marsh
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actor-Eddie Redmayne*, Actress-Felicity Jones, Score, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Modern cinema is not lacking in biopics.  In fact, nearly every year we are introduced to another dozen or so.  Over the last couple of months of this year, we'll have looks into the lives of Alan Turing, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cheryl Strayed, Louie Zamperini, Margaret Keane, and of course with this film, Professor Stephen Hawking.  These insights into the lives of extraordinary individuals frequently serve one of their intended purposes: they make the subjects look extraordinary.  There is always a sense of amazement when we see individuals face impossible odds or sudden celebrity or achieve great artistic or scientific achievement; this really happened, a seemingly normal person rose above it to accomplish something of great importance.  And yet the films rarely are able to achieve that other aspect of what a film should do, what the primary goal of a film in fact is: to be a great work of art.  Most biopics are so devoted to their subjects and to the truth that they don't have the bandwidth to also make the film compelling, fascinating and full of depth that can relate to the audience, and not just to the person that they are looking upon in awe.

(Real Life Doesn't Need a Spoiler Alert) The remarkable thing about The Theory of Everything in its first thirty minutes is that it manages to do just that: be a great movie, while still being about two fascinating individuals.  It's been eons since we've had a great romantic film between two heterosexual humans (usually you have something like Her or Weekend being a twist on the traditional Hollywood romance), and I for one was well in the mood for just that.  The first thirty minutes make love feel very alive and new onscreen.  It helps that the lead actors enjoy an enormous amount of chemistry with one another, with Redmayne's unique beauty (he's like the male Cate Blanchett) glowing beneath his thick glasses, and Felicity Jones, who has the most beautiful green eyes you can find on a big screen in modern cinema, bouncing off each other.  They're both smart, funny, and there's an ease here.  We know what is about to befall Stephen and Jane Hawking, but the film actually stretches a bit during this portion, giving us a brief but wonderful love story between the two.  This pays off during the first half, as you're left in tears when Jane demands that Stephen go play croquet with her after his diagnosis with motor neuron disease.  The first thirty minutes of this film are arguably the best "classical" Hollywood romance I've seen on a big-screen since Atonement.

The remainder of the picture is strong, but it never quite reaches those first thirty minutes.  This is perhaps the reason that I rather loathe real life stories onscreen-you occasionally have to sacrifice your strongest elements or most interesting aspects in order to cater to what "actually happened," and when the film shifts to the strains of Stephen Hawking's illness and eventual successes as an internationally known physicist, it loses a lot of that initial sparkle.  It doesn't help that you are depriving Eddie Redmayne, utterly charming onscreen always and with the piercing gazes of a Bronte male love interest, of some of his greatest gifts as an actor, and that you're allowing Felicity Jones (whom I generally find to be rather lifeless onscreen but here, with Redmayne, she seems to finally be fulfilling a bit of that promise that we've felt was there (or at least a load of casting directors clearly did)) to go back into her increasingly lifeless but desperate martyr act that was so on-display in her unsuccessful The Invisible Woman.

One of the strangest aspects of this film in theory has always been that they chose to focus on the love story between the Hawkings, since in real life they ended up divorcing in 1995.  The life of Stephen Hawking, who improbably overcame a disease that was a near certain death sentence and went on to become one of the most unlikely celebrities of the 1980's, was always meant for the screen, but the romantic angle for a relationship that ended with them splitting apart seems a bit odd for the big screen. Can you remember another romantic biopic where the couple didn't end up together in the end of the picture?  It's interesting, don't get me wrong, and the screenplay manages to somehow remain deeply sympathetic to both characters while letting neither completely off the hook (a rarity for a film about two living individuals), but it just feels strange.

The performances are strongest at the beginning of the film.  Neither Redmayne nor Jones ever quite captures that initial magic of falling in love and the early struggles with Stephen's disease.  Later in the film Redmayne's performance is quite strong, particularly in the way that he finds the limited ways that Stephen's personality can shine through, but you don't quite feel any of the optimism/pessimism balance that Dr. Hawking surely felt at that time, and the script pulls away and leaves too much to the imagination when both Hawkings start to feel romantic feelings for their future second spouses.

That said, I will admit this was a better film than I initially expected (I was rather dreading this and The Imitation Game, but at least this work isn't without a number of merits).  I'll say that the first thirty minutes is 5-star material through-and-through, absolutely wonderful and exhilarating moviemaking in a year where there was so little to celebrate, in my opinion, while the remainder is pretty standard 3-star sort of work, so I'm going to give this three stars, but with a heartier than usual recommendation to seek out the movie than I usually give to a 3-star picture.

Those are my thoughts on The Theory of Everything-what are yours?  Did you enjoy the picture?  Did you like the angles it took with approaching Dr. Hawking's life?  Were you surprised by how Felicity Jones had more screen-time than Eddie Redmayne?  And where will it land with Oscar?  Share your thoughts in the comments!