An Unremarkable Film with Fetching Assets

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2014)

BY RYAN C. SHOWERS
Every year there are one or two films that score major nominations throughout award season that are not particularly special, and they manage their accolade success by appealing to older voters and not taking many risks. Usually, films of that nature can be appreciated for style, performances, and consistency. "The Theory of Everything" is "that" film this year, but it's not as easy to appreciate as typical period piece Oscar films.
"The Theory of Everything" is most notable for its beautiful cinematography. It pleases our eyes with strong, radiant colors such as blues, golds, greens, and browns. There is also a fine texture to the photography, as if a painter swiped gloss across the lens, which produces a beautiful, faded look. To put sound with the visual, the charming musical score composed for "The Theory of Everything" is an invaluable component in the film's areas of success. Without it, the film would fall flatter than it occasionally does. In addition, Director James Marsh envisions the project on a smaller scale, as if he was holding all the components in his hands when he filmed it. The directing makes the screenplay's lacking scope excusable. Marsh makes everything fit nicely as one commodity.
On paper and at first glance, this looks like a role of a lifetime for Eddie Redmayne, and even though the writing does not allow this to be an overwhelming performance, Redmayne fades into Hawking's fight. Assertive in the beginning and subtly crushing in the later scenes, Redmayne uses his physicality and emotions to play the part as ably. Felicity Jones is his leading co-star, and she's splendid but, like Redmayne, nothing to note in the history books.
Simple and harmless, the surface is the limit in "The Theory of Everything". It has a subject matter and a pretense of something emotionally draining and three-dimensional, but the opposite could not be more true of the film in front of you. The film fails to affect the slightest bit of emotion onto its audience, and the awkward part is the numerous moments where the film thinks it is being absorbing and engaging and it's not. The characters begin to weep, waiting for us to join in with them, and we end up just uncomfortably staring at the frame. Instead of grabbing our emotions, the misfortunes of the characters instead grab our distanced, unemotional sympathy.
Though the directing should be looked at with blame for this, the script is even more responsible for the film's troubles in this area and for its general problems. The dialogue is unorganized, the ideas decides not to reach farther than what would be appropriate for junior high school audiences, and the screenplay tells this story in the most basic way possible. In fact, the best scenes in "The Theory of Everything" are the montages where we just watch the characters be instead of listening to poorly written dialogue. (The montages rely on the acting, musical score, and directing more than anything which is why they work so agreeably.)
An unremarkable film with some fetching assets.
Grade: B