ALS afflicted scientist's "triumph" or "Pyrrhic Victory?" You decide!

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2015)

I must confess to having mixed feelings about "The Theory of Everything," which covers the life of Stephen Hawking, from his days as a young graduate student afflicted with ALS (called "motor neuron disease" in England) to the present time as a celebrated scientist who communicates via a computer and is confined to a wheelchair in an immobile state, for the rest of his days.
The film's scenarist, Anthony McCarten, wisely does not attempt to explain Professor Hawking's scientific theories in great detail but is more interested in depicting Hawking's sad physical decline along with the relationship with his first wife, Jane Wilde Hawking, who wrote the book the film is based on.
The goal is to hold Hawking up as an inspiration to all of us—here was a man who was given two years to live and is still alive in his seventies. Not only is he alive but is an international figure, having made great contributions to the field of physics and wrote a worldwide, best-selling book, explaining his theories in more simplified form, so the ordinary man on the street could understand his extremely difficult concepts.
The film has a beautiful score with performances that seem quite believable. Eddie Redmayne shines as Hawking in an extremely difficult, physically-demanding role. Still there's another voice in me that asks should Hawking really be viewed as an "inspiration?" Of course he is but on the other hand, if you were a genie and could take away Hawking's disease along with his super-intelligence, I believe that Hawking wouldn't hesitate to cast off his "brains" so he could walk again. What I am trying to say is that despite the inspiration, his life is still a tragedy.
In the end, is there really enough here to create a full-length feature film? Or would a documentary serve as a better vehicle to illustrate the Hawking story? The "sad decline" which I alluded to before is quite ably illustrated here for all to see. There's not much drama in that— nor the eventual dissolution of Hawking's marriage to Jane, which was an inevitable resolution given the overall tragic circumstances.
"The Theory of Everything" is a beautiful tribute to a man who made something out of his life despite a harrowing disability. In that respect, it accomplishes what it sets out to do. We all can be inspired by such a tale but ultimately, Hawking's accomplishment is no "triumph." The dream sequence where Hawking gets out of his wheelchair and picks up a pen while attending a conference reminds us that such a simple act trumps any of the afflicted scientist's intellectual accomplishments which is decidedly akin to nothing more than a Pyrrhic Victory.