The Theory of Everything turns Stephen Hawking’s life into a love story, and the gamble mostly pays off. James Marsh directs from Anthony McCarten’s script, adapted from Jane Hawking’s 2007 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen; Felicity Jones plays Jane. The film runs 123 minutes and opened the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2014 before its UK premiere on 1 January 2015.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures UK.
Eddie Redmayne and the Diagnosis at 21
The film begins in 1963 at the University of Cambridge, where Stephen is a postgraduate astrophysics student and Jane is studying literature. He is clever, and everyone around him is worried he has no thesis topic. A lecture by Roger Penrose on black holes points him toward an idea: that black holes might have been part of the universe’s creation.
Then his muscles start to fail. He loses coordination. After a bad fall, a doctor tells him he has early-onset progressive degenerative motor neurone disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. There is no treatment. He is given about two years to live.
The doctor tells him his brain will not be affected. His thoughts and intelligence will stay intact, but eventually he will not be able to communicate them. Redmayne plays that stretch of the film — the depression, the withdrawal into work — with a control that never tips into display.
Jane Wilde Stays
Jane tells him she loves him and that she plans to stay. They marry. They have a son, Robert. When his walking gets worse, he starts using a wheelchair.
Marsh keeps the camera close to the marriage rather than the physics. That is the right call for this material and also the film’s main limitation. The science is present but thin. Penrose’s work on spacetime singularities at the centre of black holes gives Stephen his thesis: that a black hole created the universe in a Big Bang, and that it will end in a Big Crunch. He presents that viva, and the film treats it as a personal victory rather than an intellectual one.
The Hawkings’ Marriage and Jonathan Hellyer Jones
After the Hawkings have their daughter Lucy, Jane gets frustrated. She is raising the children and managing Stephen’s slowly degenerating health while his fame grows, all at the expense of her own academic work. Stephen tells her he will understand if she needs help.
Charlie Cox plays Jonathan Hellyer Jones, who enters the household as that help. Emily Watson plays Beryl Wilde, Simon McBurney plays Frank Hawking, and David Thewlis plays Dennis Sciama, Stephen’s advisor. Maxine Peake appears as Elaine Mason. Harry Lloyd plays Brian. The supporting cast is deep and largely underused.
The film’s tagline is “His mind changed our world. Her love changed his.” That is the thesis, stated plainly, and the film does not complicate it much.
Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Score and Benoît Delhomme’s Camera
Two crafts carry the film when the script sags. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score is the best thing in it — patient, sad, never pushing a scene further than it can go. Benoît Delhomme’s cinematography keeps Cambridge and the family interiors warm without turning them into postcards.
Those two elements, plus the two leads, are what the film’s reputation rests on. They are enough to hold the thing together, but not enough to make it more than a well-made biography.
The Numbers Behind The Theory of Everything
- Runtime: 123 minutes
- Production budget: US$15 million
- Worldwide gross: US$123 million
- Academy Award nominations: 5 — Best Picture, Best Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score (Jóhann Jóhannsson), and Best Actor, which Redmayne won
- Academy Award wins: 1 — Best Actor (Eddie Redmayne)
- BAFTA nominations: 10
- Metacritic: 71/100
- Clay Tribune score: 7.1/10
What the Awards Got Right
Ranking the film’s achievements from most to least earned:
- Eddie Redmayne’s Best Actor win. He carries the physical deterioration across three decades without turning it into a stunt. The source records the win; whether the Academy chose correctly is an argument, not a fact.
- Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score. It was nominated for Best Original Score. The source does not say what happened to that nomination.
- Felicity Jones’s nomination. She is the film’s emotional centre, and the script gives her less to do than the performance deserves.
- The Best Picture nomination. This is where the film is overrated. It is a solid drama, not a great one.
- The Adapted Screenplay nomination. McCarten’s script is efficient and a little safe.
Where the Film Stops Short
The Theory of Everything is a good film that could have been a better one. It has the performances, the score and the camera. What it does not have is a willingness to sit with the difficulty of what Jane Hawking describes in Travelling to Infinity — the exhaustion, the resentment, the cost of a marriage built around care.
The film touches those things. It does not dwell on them. It softens Jane’s frustration into something more palatable, and softens Stephen’s own contradictions in the process. The result is moving, but it is moving in a way that has been smoothed out.
Against the 2014 awards field, this was a strong contender and a reasonable winner for Redmayne. It was never the best film of its year, and the Best Picture nomination flatters it. The 71 on Metacritic and the US$123 million gross against a US$15 million budget point the same direction: critics rated it well and it made its money back many times over. The source does not say what audiences thought of it.
The Verdict on The Theory of Everything
What the film gets right, it gets right through Redmayne and Jones. Their scenes together carry the weight that the script leaves on the table. When the film is just the two of them in a room, it works.
What it gets wrong is the balance. It is a film about a man whose mind was the point, and it keeps reaching for the heart instead. That is a defensible choice for a 123-minute drama adapted from a wife’s memoir. It is also why the film feels smaller than its subject.
Watch it for the performances and the score. Do not watch it expecting the science, and do not expect the marriage to be examined as closely as it deserves. The Theory of Everything is a fine film with a soft centre, and it knows it.
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