The Theory Of Everything Review

The Theory Of Everything Review

The Theory of Everything tells the story of the life of professor Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) . It’s based on the books written by his ex wife Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones) and as such focuses mainly on their relationship together. I’ll admit I was pleasantly surprised by the film and it is infinitely better than its award season British science biopic rival The Imitation Game. Yet the film still has some flaws.

The film starts off very slowly  acting as a sort of Stephen Hawking origin story, we see him go to a famous Cambridge laboratory hoping to be inspired, the film plays on the idea of him not knowing what to do with his life yet of course we the audience know what happens. During this part of the film Jane is mainly in the background. If I were to pin point one part of the film that really doesn’t work it would be these opening 40 mins because the run very slowly and offer us no insight into either Stephen or Jane. Yet after this period really starts to pick up. Once Stephen has been diagnosed with ALS the film focuses less on him and more on Jane. It starts to examine how his diagnosis and his increased ego took a toll on his marriage. Hawking is mainly in the background for this part of the film but still looming over Jane as she struggles to cope with this stage of family life. The reason this stands out more than the first section of the film is because it is the part of the film that starts to offer some insight into the life of this very unique family unit. In my opinion the film would have been improved had it simply started with the marriage of Jane and Stephen and continued to follow Jane throughout the story whilst still giving us insight into Stephen yet through the eyes of Jane but also Jonathan the choir director Jane falls for whilst her marriage struggles. The main reason for the success of this part of the film though is the stand out performance from Felicity Jones. Whilst Redmayne has received all of the acclaim for his performance I think that Jones is actually the better of the pair. Don’t get me wrong that acclaim is very much deserved the way he manages to capture Hawking’s facial expression and the way he holds his body throughout the film is fascinating and worthy of praise yet Jones terrifically encapsulates this character who is facing battles between what she wants and what is best for her family whilst also trying to stay on top of everything. Jones also gives us a sense of how Jane feels about being married to a man slowly retreating into his own God complex whilst never saying directly how she feels. Jones plays Wilde with such skill and warmth that again you wish that the film focused on her story more. It’s also in this part of the story that James Marsh’s direction really comes alive, whilst in the opening to the film he employs a sort of point and shoot style as Stephens communication becomes worse and worse Marsh’s visual story telling gets better his composition of shots allows us to infer the status of the drama from the visual images being presented.

The Theory Of Everything is an interesting film that manages to follow a standard biopic path for most of its running time. Yet it still falls occasionally flat and could be improved by changing is perspective whilst still telling the same story.

3.5/5 Stars