MOVIE REVIEW: The Theory of Everything

Like many other people out there, I never really ever thought I had some deep, emotional personal connection to Stephen Hawking. I knew of his work and I knew he was an amazing and inspiring person yet my eyes had never really been opened up to him properly. 

I saw the trailer for this movie in November some time and I cried. I then watched it about a billion more times and again and again, I cried. Not, as I said before, because I have some deep personal connection to Hawking himself but because the movie allows you to have some perspective on him prior to his illness and how it affected him throughout the years to follow. 

The movie of course follows the development of Hawking's Motor Neuron Disease (or Lou Gehrigs disease) but also follows his wife Jane and the struggles she faced as Hawking's full time carer as well as looking after their three children. What I noticed is that the film, although obviously focused on Hawkings struggles with his disease, didn't centre on one specific aspect of his life but rather brushed over a lot of them, sort of giving you a little information on a lot of stuff. The beginning of the movie had me expecting to see a little more of his discoveries throughout university however when Redmayne's character because suddenly aware of his condition the movie jumped to a montage clip of Stephen and Jane throughout their marriage and the birth of their first child. I felt like I was on a tour of Stephen Hawking's life yet being hurried through this section because there were so many important bits for us to see before the movie ended.  

Although I will never have a single clue of the specifics surrounding Hawking's discoveries, the film did teach me a lot about his life that i didn't know before. I was unaware that he and Jane actually divorced in 1995 and that he later remarried. I also didn't know of Jane's struggles and her affair with Jonathan, of course the film is actually an adaptation of Jane Wilde's own novel 'Travelling to Infinity'.

The overall appeal of the film was no doubt aided by the ridiculously dreamy Eddie Redmayne himself who, I gotta say, has an absolute likeness for Hawking that is totally uncanny. 

I think people get obsessed with the bildungsroman, they get attached to the characters and become obsessed with seeing them grow. When the character that you're following is negatively affected and you get to see how that changes them some kind of overwhelming sadness surrounds you so it no longer matters that there wasn't a prior emotional connection. The magic of this film is that anyone can relate to Hawking in that everybody has had to at some point overcome all odds to achieve something amazing, be that on any scale small or large.

A definite must-see for January, uplifting and certainly had the rest of my day set out to be a good one.

xxrachelhelen

London Weekend

When I received my scholarship in November the first thing I thought to buy was a weekend in London because, well, why not? I love London and I thought It would be a cool thing to go solo and seek out all the cool places I haven't yet been. Unfortunately London is too big and far too cool for me to see all of these places in just two days so I only saw little bits, however I seek to return this June! 

Sadly for me, when I arrived at 9am on Friday I hadn't yet heard of baggage storage and so I was burdened by my (actually quite compact and handy) suitcase however I just set off wandering and visited a bunch of places. I passed through the super cliché sight-seeing spots that I've seen every other time I've come to London but it's always nice to do them again. 

[1) The Mall 2) Big Ben/Westminster 3) Horses Guard Parade, Whitehall 4) The Women of WWII memorial, Whitehall]

I'd never been to Brick Lane before so I decided to get off at Liverpool Street Station and take a wander round. On the way I bypassed an All Saints and an Urban Outfitters (it is incredibly hard going clothes shopping whilst carrying a cappuccino in one hand and an umbrella in the other). I find it super weird how many little areas London is and how they dot these big-name brand stores all over the place. I found myself wandering down a lot of Jack the Ripper-esque side streets and lanes, it was so authentic. A lot of the shutters on houses like those above are actually recently painted and quite new but it still looks super eerie. I enjoy the scuzziness of Whitechapel and Brick Lane has some cool shops, I even popped into Rough Trade and picked up a couple records. 

After an hour or so I decided to pop to the natural history museum but the line was so incredibly long. Instead I (rather glumly) strolled through Knightsbridge, popped into Harrods and purchased a couple of (disgusting, absolutely disgusting) macaroons, for which my taste has not quite come around, and a lil gift for my Mum. 

I also decided to check out Shepards Bush Westfield shopping centre but it was so warm wandering around that I could barely enjoy myself. I searched through about a million different clothing shops but nothing took my fancy, not even you Topshop, sorry Topshop. I didn't make a clothing purchase that whole weekend!

Later that evening I ended up coming out of London Bridge station knowing I was somewhere near the Shard however I was surprised to see I was actually stood right at the foot of it. It's so incredibly huge I actually fell backwards trying to look up. Tower Bridge was also on my to-do list so I took a nice stroll along Southside water-front, avoiding crowds of foreign tourists and about a billion selfie sticks almost hitting me in the face, until my phone died and I began my search for a tube station to take my sleepy-self home. 

Sunday finally saw my Natural History Museum dreams come true! It also saw me figuring out that baggage-storage was indeed a thing. I got down super early at 10am and got rather overly excited about dinosaur bones and displays of creepy-crawlys. Despite all the other cool stuff, this immense wall of different constellations was my favourite thing to look at, simply because it was so huge and pretty. 

It's safe to say that a measly 50 ours spent in London is enough to wear anybody out and boy am I glad I don't live right in the middle of it all (yet). I have spent all week trying to recover from some sort of super cold London seems to have sent me off with however I had a fabulous weekend. 

Cya June Ldn.

xxrachelhelen