Black Holes In a Soap Opera

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2014)

Spoilers...if you don't know history.
From the opening minutes of a bunch of annoying brainiacs in a prestigious college trying to pick up girls through scripted banter, I could not stop comparing this film with A Beautiful Mind. Both are sanitized biopics about troubled ivy league geniuses, both feature degenerating male leads and sympathetic female ones, both feature the same annoyingly-warm lighting, the same clichéd, harmless script, and the same overcompensating, bravado performances.
The Theory of Everything tells the story of Stephen Hawking, an ambitious physicist struggling to keep a normal family life and a fertile professional career amidst his crippling motor neuron disease which eventually leaves him almost entirely paralyzed. The script sidesteps many of Hawking's most important ideas and instead focuses on his relationship with his wife Jane and the drama that inevitably ensues in a marriage strained by illness. I knew the film would go the soapy route but I didn't know to what extent. For a man with so many brilliant hypotheses, The Theory of Everything only scratches the surface and leaves the audience with a made-for-TV quality script with an unearned sense of grandiosity.
Thank god for these performances! A part like Stephen Hawking is pure gold for any brave actor willing to take on the challenge, and Eddie Redmayne did the best possible job with the given material. His body movements (or lack thereof) and speech patterns are highly realistic for a man with Hawking's condition. In the second half, he becomes a silent actor and contorts his face like a seasoned pro, gathering more sympathy through facial gestures than words. Felicity Jones as Jane manages to keep up with Redmayne and cultivates quite a nice chemistry with him that endures through the hardest of times. Jonathan Jones, Jane's second husband, is probably the most charming character in the entire film, and Charlie Cox's performance is undeniably delightful.
Visually, James Marsh created an admirable film with a few flashes of whimsy and creativity (excellent eye/black hole match cut and a wonderfully edited montage near the end). The score by Benoît Delhomme is predictably opulent, quaint yet overly dramatic.
The Theory of Everything takes an enthralling true life story and diminishes it in the way most lives are when condensed into two hours of pure Oscar bait. Still, the story never veers into unwatchable territory and the acting talent on display is reason enough to see it.