7/10

Rating: 7/10 (15 January 2015)

A very powerful story with amazing moments and flat out stunning performance's by its leads that gets immensely toned down by some of the very mediocre filmaking that got behind it.
I want to say this first because it was the think that really bugged me: the first act of this movie is a mess. Throughout the first twenty minutes I was really disappointed. Even Eddie Redmayne, who I will rave about later, was kind of bad in the start. Everything seems so offbeat, clichéd, cheesy, it really seems as it is setting itself up for failure from second one, where it starts with possibly the most clichéd and frustratingly predictable scene it could have possibly started with. It seems to be directed by a computer: "shot here, close up here, establishing here transitional here a now to cut" was what I heard the screen screaming to me at the start. Plus it had many laughable filmaking and storytelling techniques, which, although got less and less frequent, carried throughout the whole film. It had a number of interactions which were supposedly there to elevate the drama, but ended up making me kind of embarrassed. Moreover...man what was going on with this cinematography? It is the most uneven I have seen in my life! The shot composition isn't in anyway off, but that lighting and that color palette changed every other scene, it was so off putting!
Fortunately of all those negatives the movie only carries on only the last two, after the first act. Once it gets deep into its emotional and thematic core it becomes fascinating and sometimes very hard to watch. To say Eddie Redmayne is cast perfectly would be an understatement, he carries out the gargantuan task of portraying the great Hawking, in the best way possible and succeeds in a performance that deserves all and more of the attention he got, this actor can do no wrong at this point. Equally brilliant, but unfortunately much less talked about, it Felicity Jones, who isn't definitely in as a shiny of a role, but she surely is as amazingly great as her co-lead. With subtlety she holds up the emotional core of the movie that could have really collapsed had their not been a performance of such brilliance at the center of it. Moreover I have to give recognition to a great score that elevated even more the sentiment the movie had. On the other hand, I am kind of torn on the screenplay of the film. On on side it explores some very human themes that touched me deeply and gives a brilliant portrayal of this stunning story, but on the other it gives a very, very simplistic cut to the whole scientific aspect that I would have enjoyed a lot to see, had it been there.
To sum it up, "The Theory of Everything" is an engrossing an emotional resonant real life drama that I would recommend to see, it's only unfortunate that it could have been much more.