Crowd pleasing biopic is glossy but hard to dislike

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2015)

This crowd pleasing biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking, a sort of cross between A Beautiful Mind and My Left Foot, is glossy but is also hard to dislike. Hawking's life story is by now known by most people – struck by the terrible and incurable motor neuron disease in 1963 when he was a Ph.D. student in physics at Cambridge University, and told he had just two years to live, he decided nevertheless to go ahead with his life, marry his girlfriend Jane (played wonderfully here by the sweet petite Felicity Jones) and become a world renowned theoretical physicist exploring subjects such as the nature of time and black holes. 52 years later, he is still alive, though virtually immobile and trapped in a wheelchair, communicating through a computer.
This movie is based on Jane's autobiography, and so it focuses less on his scientific achievements and more on how Jane coped with his consuming illness, while raising three children (!). One of their differences was that Hawking was an outspoken atheist while his wife was a practicing Christian. Ironically, given his atheism, the movie suggests it was Jane's deeply religious belief that made her care for him despite his increasing disabilities. An atheist or agnostic girlfriend, might have balked at caring for him after learning about his illness. The movie also suggests that Hawking's strange allusions to God in his bestselling book "A Brief history of Time" was a concession to his long caring wife.
Eventually, their marriage proved too difficult and exhausting, and after many years, they both end up settling with different persons, she with the choirmaster of her local church (played by Charlie Cox), and he with his full time nurse (Maxine Peake).
Eddie Redmayne is wonderful in the starring role. He plays Hawking as arrogant, somewhat mischievous and not always likable, which is understandable given his crippling illness. Also with Emily Watson, David Thewlis and Simon McBurney. Directed by James Marsh.