The Theory of Everything

Steven Hawking based his life’s work around exploring the boundaries of the universe, testing them, seeing where they were. Film can be a boundless medium. It starts with a blank page, and can go from there to show someone’s inner thoughts, wildest fantasies, their future, their past in any mix or order imaginable. It’s so disappointing that what could end up as Hawking’s definitive biopic is so trapped in the bounds of every bad biopic of recent memory.

It’s also a shame that Eddie Redmayne’s revelatory performance is trapped here too. He does some really great, subtle work even before the drastic physical transformation takes place. The budding romance with Felicity Jones’ Jane in the first act are easily the movie’s best scenes. The party sequence where Hawking uses his knowledge of laundry detergent to entice Jane is a definite highlight. Their first kiss under booming fireworks is a bit of a cliché, but a very tender and beautifully shot cliché. Redmayne portrays the following physical challenges with crushing, brutal honesty. By the time we get to the third act, Redmayne is doing more with just slight hand movements, word choice, and his eyes than most actors can emote with their full voice and range of motion.

Unfortunately, that first kiss under the fireworks is one of precious-few visually interesting moments to be found. Much of the slightly-bloated middle looks like it’s shot with a bad Instagram filter. There are a couple wedding and family montages done like this, going for the look of old home movies, but it just comes off distractingly ugly. Most of the interior shots seem blown out in that same fake golden light. It only seems to ever get cloudy when thematically relevant.

One of those clouds comes in the form of Charlie Cox as the hunky widowed church choir conductor destined to tempt Jane just as her marriage to Steven becomes the most challenging. Right on cue out of the biography movie handbook. Their courtship is restrained compared to Steven and Jane’s, yet equally cute. Here is where it’s most obvious that the screenplay is based on Jane’s memoir, as she comes across as holier than most saints. Jane and Steven’s marriage falls apart in a beautifully-acted scene that’s a great showcase for both Jones and Redmayne. It wouldn’t be a great surprise to see it on both of their Oscar reels.

Any time a serious, Oscar-pedigree film unspools a slow motion montage that recalls the underrated parody film WALK HARD more than something like WALK THE LINE, well— it’s not good. The last ten minutes also play out much like the “Beautiful Ride” song from that same movie. The flashbacks of the nostalgia-tinted flashbacks are enough to make one queasy. The most interesting scene does come in the midst of this. At a talk for his latest, greatest book, time seems to stop as Hawking straightens up in his chair, stands, strides across the room, and picks up a pretty coed’s pen. It doesn’t entirely work, and it’s still too little too late. But it at least shows some kind of pulse and a willingness to try to color outside the numbers. That’s more than can be said of most of the rest of the movie.