The Theory of Everything (12A.)
Directed by James Marsh.
Starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, David Thewlis, Maxine Peake and Simon McBurnery. Released on New Year's Day. 123 mins
The hook for the film version of Jane Hawking's book about her marriage to Stephen Hawking is that it is a great untold love story. It certainly isn’t untold – this is the fourth film about his life following on from Errol Morris's A Brief History of Time, the BBC Benedict Cumberbatch version and the documentary Hawking from 2013. And, as told here, I'm not quite sure it is a love story.
The relationship shown here between the two is unbalanced. Aside from the five minutes of screen time after he is diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease and given two years to live, Redmaynes's Hawking is an ebullient, perpetually grinning quipster throughout. In his early days at Cambridge he is like Matt Smith in Austen Powers fancy dress. Felicity Jones's Jane though seems to view the marriage as a very English martyrdom. They had three children together but though you get the affection and caring you never get any sense of physical attraction between them. She is devoted, selfless, loyal but also rather too prim and proper. It's like watching Sid James being wheeled around by Kenneth Williams wheeling around Sid James. Jane is selfless but, as Benny Hill once put it, “a woman's needs are manifold,” and her attention eventually wander to another.
The material has been crafted into an effective crowd pleasing picture without becoming a total travesty. It does at least attempt to outline the basics of his work into time and black holes and it is certainly unusual to have a film where the lead is an intellectual atheist (and socialist) who isn't made to repent his heresies. At the start he asks if she is religious and she replies that she is C of E, which I always assumed meant No but in her case means Yes even though she is married to a man trying to disprove His existence. The relevance of faith is an important theme of the film and one with the propensity for wimping out but he film holds true to its subject.
Directed by James Marsh.
Starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, David Thewlis, Maxine Peake and Simon McBurnery. Released on New Year's Day. 123 mins
The hook for the film version of Jane Hawking's book about her marriage to Stephen Hawking is that it is a great untold love story. It certainly isn’t untold – this is the fourth film about his life following on from Errol Morris's A Brief History of Time, the BBC Benedict Cumberbatch version and the documentary Hawking from 2013. And, as told here, I'm not quite sure it is a love story.
The relationship shown here between the two is unbalanced. Aside from the five minutes of screen time after he is diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease and given two years to live, Redmaynes's Hawking is an ebullient, perpetually grinning quipster throughout. In his early days at Cambridge he is like Matt Smith in Austen Powers fancy dress. Felicity Jones's Jane though seems to view the marriage as a very English martyrdom. They had three children together but though you get the affection and caring you never get any sense of physical attraction between them. She is devoted, selfless, loyal but also rather too prim and proper. It's like watching Sid James being wheeled around by Kenneth Williams wheeling around Sid James. Jane is selfless but, as Benny Hill once put it, “a woman's needs are manifold,” and her attention eventually wander to another.
The material has been crafted into an effective crowd pleasing picture without becoming a total travesty. It does at least attempt to outline the basics of his work into time and black holes and it is certainly unusual to have a film where the lead is an intellectual atheist (and socialist) who isn't made to repent his heresies. At the start he asks if she is religious and she replies that she is C of E, which I always assumed meant No but in her case means Yes even though she is married to a man trying to disprove His existence. The relevance of faith is an important theme of the film and one with the propensity for wimping out but he film holds true to its subject.
