An unexpected triumph

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2015)

"The Theory of Everything" is an apt title; James Marsh's film certainly encompasses much. It's both biopic and love story, you might say in equal measure. As a biopic it's much less sentimental than I had expected, given its subject, (Professor Stephen Hawking), and for most of the time, as a love story, it eschews sentimentality, too. Of course, the love story at the centre and which takes up a good deal of the film, is that between Hawking and his first wife Jane, on whose book the film is based. On a lesser level it's also a film about science and about an illness, Motor Neuron Disease. It tells us little about either but that's hardly a fault. It is a film about human beings and not about molecules and I have to confess I was surprised at just how good it was.
I had expected something tantamount to a Masterpiece Theatre production and while it's certainly cosy at times and very British, it's also extremely intelligent, (Anthony McCarten's screenplay is first-rate), and it never dwells for longer than is necessary on any issue once its point has been made. Consequently, it never feels anything like two hours in a cinema. The director, James Marsh, has proved his pedigree in the past in the field of documentary ("Man on Wire", "Project Nim") but that earlier work doesn't really prepare you for something on this scale. The film feels epic and intimate at the same time.
It's also superbly played. Redmayne, surely, has to be the one to beat when it comes to handing out prizes. His performance is not only a brilliant physical transformation but he somehow seems to get inside the mind of Hawking as well. I'm not saying it's easy to play someone who is severely physically handicapped but I think it must be harder to convince us when you're doing very little or nothing at all and it's in these quiet moments that Redmayne is at his best.
As Jane, Felicity Jones, (she was Dickens' mistress in "The Invisible Woman"), is also superb. She gives Jane a much steelier edge than may have been expected. Jane sacrifices almost everything but is the first to pull the plug on the marriage. A host of outstanding character actors give us various parents, colleagues and carers without ever lapsing into caricature. Charlie Cox's almost too-good-to-be-true choir master is a case in point. The character may be the dashing white knight who comes to Jane's rescue but manages to give us a glimpse into the soul of the man. There's also a lovely supporting turn from David Thewlis as Stephen's professor at Cambridge. It's not totally perfect; one or two of the romantic moments tend towards the mawkish but these are fleeting. All in all, this is something a triumph and a rather unexpected one.