By Kyle Osborne
I know this sounds cocky, but of the 5 guys who will be nominated for Best Actor Oscars at the next Academy Awards—I’m certain I know 3 of them.
The first soon to be nominee is Eddie Redmayne, who plays the celebrated scientist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory Of Everything” Even though it’s a bio pic, I like that it doesn’t follow many of that genre’s conventions—it lets us jump right in while Hawking is at Oxford, he hasn’t yet been struck by ALS which, as we know, will soon take away his motor movements, and he is every bit the cheerful nerd—fully aware that brilliant minds often come with social awkwardness. But not only does he grab a date with a beautiful girl, it, in fact, becomes the foundation of a thirty year relationship.
His body gets progressively drawn up and frozen, but not his mind, the 72 year old who was given two years to live upon diagnosis has had a full life, and the movie is initially a love story—the brilliant wunderkind and the lovely poetry student, Jane Wilde, who stands by him from the onset of this horrible disease and throughout their lengthy marriage that will produce 3 children.
“The Theory of Everything” is a first class tear jerker but it’s not maudlin and it doesn’t wallow in cinematic sentimentality. Redmayne’s performance is authentic and surprisingly not showy, considering how physically demanding the role is. A lot of stories about the disabled make their subjects out to be saints, but since most of the screenplay was adapted from Hawking’s former wife’s memoir, we see that he has as much ego and can be as temperamental as the next award-winning genius, able-bodied or not. Speaking of whom, Felicity Jones plays Jane as a three dimensional person whose devotion is tested by, well, fatigue as much as anything.
It must be pointed out that the film, like the real Stephen Hawking, has a sense of humor—it’s not all tears, but bring a tissue anyway.
‘The Theory of Everything’ is one of the year’s best films by far. It gets 4 out of 4 Stars.