From: "eric walker" <eric.walker@channel1.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: brief history of time
Date: 27 Sep 92 14:58:48 EST
Reply-To: "eric walker" <eric.walker@channel1.com>
Distribution: rec
Organization: Channel 1 Communications

          Since the earliest days, Man has looked up at the stars and
     wondered just what was out there.  Were the myths true, and were the
     stars created by the gods, or by God?  How do stars work?  Will
     our Universe ever come to an end?  Which came first, the chicken or
     the egg?  Did God create the Universe, and does he play dice with
     it?
          These are the questions asked by Stephen Hawking, one of the
     greatest minds in the scientific community, in Errol Morris'
     fascinating-but-unsatisfying documentary "A Brief History Of Time,"
     with a title taken from Hawking's own best-selling book on black
     holes and the beginnings of the Universe.
          Hawking's mind has travelled to the farthest reaches of time,
     but in contrast his body cannot go beyond his wheelchair.  He suffers
     from , a disease that is slowly robbing him of the ability to move
     his muscles; over the years he has lost the ability to walk, to
     lift himself up, and even to speak.  In 1985 he suffered from a bout
     with pneumonia, and as a result he had to have a tracheotomy in which
     he lost his voice completely.  Hawking now communicates with the
     world through an electronic voice from a computer terminal attached to
     his wheelchair.  Oddly enough, the computer's mechanical (but not
     emotionless) voice suits him better than any human voice ever did,
     and it's the perfect vehicle to deliver his dry, British wit.  The
     movie is quite funny, and we're engrossed from its first moment,
     when we see a vision of infinities of stars, and we hear Hawking's
     keypad clicking away and forming sentences for us.
          Morris wisely avoids the standard "hero triumphing over
     tremendous odds" approach of documentary filmmaking.  Hawking suffers
     from a disease that would make it easy to pity him, and yet he still
     became one of the greatest names in the scientific world.  Instead of
     the usual "battle for his life" that we would expect, however, Morris
     prefers to cast Hawking as an individual who willingly accepted the
     hand dealt him by Fate.  He lost the ability to walk, to talk, to
     move by himself, but he didn't mind; he just accepted it and continued
     from there.  He's simply a man in a wheelchair, writing books and
     papers with the aid of a computer.  If he had any bitterness about his
     condition, he doesn't show it here.
          This is why we don't even see a complete shot of Hawking until
     nearly half an hour into the movie; when the movie begins, we first
     hear the sound of his clicking keypad.  We are then treated to a
     close-up of his eyes, concentrating on his computer screen, and
     several shots of his face appearing amidst flashes of his early life,
     when he could walk.  Nearly all of the present-day scenes with Hawking
     consist solely of his face, his eyes, or his hand at the keypad -
     these are his most important parts, and to dwell on the wheelchair
     would be a way of pitying a man who has no need to be pitied.
          In fact, as his mother notes, it was the disease that contributed
     to Hawking's decision to concentrate on theoretical physics.  While
     growing up and attending college, he seemed to be a bored genius - he
     could easily solve problems, but he had no interest in doing anything
     worthwhile.  The disease (and his engagement to his wife, now
     separated) made him face the reality of death for the first time, and
     he resolved to bring direction and meaning to his life after that.
     He then began his now-famous research into the structure of black
     holes, entropy, quantum physics, and other areas of science that we
     can barely conceive.

     (Continued in next message.)
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