Time

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2014)

Another film dealing with black holes and the many theories on time. To start, I can appreciate the simplicity involved with the writing of the film. I'm glad they didn't try and complicate things too much. Instead these theories are presented to us at a high school level so basically everyone can understand. But that's not the bulk of the story or why we went to the theaters. We went to see the beautiful and difficult relationship between Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane.
Now it is based off of Jane's book about her life with Stephen before and after he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. Sure the way they meet in the film is a bit clichéd but it didn't matter because of how great their chemistry was on screen. Felicity Jones was wonderful. I had only seen her in Spiderman before this so I had my doubts but her and Eddie Redmayne are close to locks for Oscars, even in this packed acting year. My favorite moments from the film involved them and just how effortlessly their chemistry seemed. It reminded me a lot of one of my all-time favorite films A Beautiful Mind in that sense. Living with someone with this disease and knowing the expected life span is not long had to be extremely difficult and Jones portrayed that perfectly. Redmayne gave us so many sides to his character without being able to do much was very impressive. He also had several emotional scenes with his family and friends that were just heartbreaking. They were beautifully mixed with Johann Johannsson score which will probably also get nominated come February.
As much as I loved the relationship aspects of the film I wish we got a little more insight into just how much of a genius he was. We see him fight through this terrible disease but we don't see him fight previous theories or challenge the grain as much as I thought. We hear him talk about it briefly here and there but I cant say I remember each thing he accomplished. It did make me interested to read up on some of that going forward. It also made me appreciate Interstellar even more with some of his theories being implicated into the making of that film. So if you're a sucker for romance films you will love this story. In particular just how great the performances were. I'm sure you will hear about them come awards season.
+Edmayne & Jones Oscar worthy
+Johannsson's score
+Chemistry among everyone
-Not as much focus on his work
7.8/10