A brief history of Stephen Hawking

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2014)

The Theory of Everything tells the story of one of the most respected living scientists, Stephen Hawking, from his days as a young, brilliant physics student to his struggle with Lou Gehrig's Disease, and becoming the man we know today, with the mechanical voice.
As a person who admires but doesn't fully understand science, or the real-life Hawking's contribution to it, I liked that this film attempted to explore his work a little, in lay man's terms. The film brings up God's role in the universe a lot, effectively dramatizing the science- Hawking is into the big questions. But The Theory of Everything is mostly a personal story, his trying to cope with being a brilliant scientist losing all voluntary physical movement and speech. It's frustrating to see him trying to explain his theories, but gratifying when the Soviet scientist announces the little man has done it. It mainly follows his family life and the difficult situation he and his wife Jane are in, and essentially makes Jane out to be a saint.
Eddie Redmayne, who plays Hawking, deserves real credit for being able to portray a character from a young, able-bodied (but still shaky) man, to a man struggling to speak, to wheelchair-bound and speechless. His triumph- or Hawking's- is inspirational.