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The Theory of Everything: Almost
By Sandra Olmsted
Director James Marsh’s adapts Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen, the book by the first Mrs. Stephen Hawking, in The Theory of Everything and reveals a sympathetic, humanistic side of the famous British physicist and an even more sympathetic one of his first wife, Jane.
The film chronicles their courtship and marriage in the face of a death sentence diagnosis which Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) received while still a graduate student at Cambridge University. Given two years or less to live, Stephen withdraws until Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones) forces him to not give up and doggedly decides to marry him despite the predicted limitations of time. Meanwhile, Stephen pursues an understanding of time on many levels, from scientific to personal.
While the film is revealing of Stephen, the portrait of Jane that emerges makes her human and likable. She signed onto a difficult and short life with her beloved, and as years go by her love for Stephen doesn’t flag, but her desire for a life that other young wives and mothers have also challenges her spirit. Even while depicting her attraction for a young widower, Jonathan Hellyer Jones (Charlie Cox), Marsh remains fair. Later, when Stephen acts on his attraction for Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake), Marsh’s sensitive direction provides a depiction of a marriage ending not through fault but through the way people change because life presents the unexpected.
The major theme of the film pits Jane’s belief in God and devout participation in the Church of England against Stephen’s refusal to believe in a higher power or supreme being because such belief might skew his scientific inquiries. While only briefly discussed, this theme plays out in director of photography Benoit Delhomme’s stunning visuals which are full of Christian iconography. Because of Marsh’s insistence on high production values, the evocative images, costuming, authentic locations, and composer Johann Johannsson’s mathematically-inspired score make England in the 1960s-1995 radiant.
The performances, by Redmayne, Jones, and Cox especially, scream for Oscar nominations although the too brief appearances by Simon McBurney as Stephen’s father and Emily Watson as Jane’s mother also add much to the film.
While Marsh doesn’t ignore the vast scientific achievements of Stephen Hawking, the director also doesn’t weigh down the film by trying to present even a layman’s version of Hawking’s scientific discoveries as Hawking did himself in his bestseller A Brief History of Time. Marsh presents the moments of revelation through Stephen’s point of view using montages and symbolic images so that the emphasis is placed not on the specific discovery but on the process of problem solving and discovery.
The film’s title, The Theory of Everything, refers to Stephen’s search for a unifying theory to explain the universe and connect several theories about space and time. The Theory of Everything, a Focus Features release, is rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive material and runs 123 minutes. The biopic to see this holiday season, The Theory of Everything opens Friday Nov. 21 in St. Louis theaters.
