A Lush Baroque Love Story Turns into a Medical Nightmare --

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2015)

A Theory of Almost Everything-- or Cosmology for Beginners. Viewed at MK2 Bibliothèque, Paris, January 26, 2015. This fervent quasi religious hagiography starts out as a tender saccharine love story in Cambridge,1963, but soon segues into a Medical Horror picture. It ultimately became an ordeal to sit through because hitherto unknown actor Eddie Redmayne got Hawking so right -- down to the last twisted tormented detail -- that it became sickening to watch after a while. If Eddie doesn't stumble off with the Best Actor Oscar this year it will be a major mystery. He should also be decorated with a Purple Heart for heavy suffering sustained in the line of duty. Felicity Jones is a revelation as the totally dedicated long suffering wife and her unwavering steadfast support needs to be recognized as well. The most curious aspect of this based-on-actual-facts tale is that, bent out of shape as he was, Hawking managed to impregnate wife Jane three times -- although the third time might have been an end run by choir master Jonathan. Apparently his brain was not the only organ spared by the onslaught of Lou Gehrig's disease.
Altogether a worthy ordeal to sit through had it not been so weighed down with a ponderous musical score that felt like gravitational collapse. Plenty of heady cosmology in there for serious students of spacetime singularities and black hole leakage and a must- see for all who purchased Hawking's famous bestseller, "A Brief History of Time" but couldn't get past page two. In the last scene at a well attended public appearance Hawking is asked whether he believes in God, After a painfully long pause he launches into a long non-committal answer and receives a standing ovation from an audience that would prefer to think he believes ~~ but we who have read his later works know he's as much of as atheist as ever ~ Thank God! Five Stars for the Lush Cinematography, but viewer Beware -- this is not about Jelly Beans! -- plus an extra two for the inclusion, however brief, of two other Important cosmologists, Dennis Sciama and Roger Penrose.
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