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