The Theory of Everything is the sort of movie that often attracts Oscar nominations—and often wins. A block of Academy voters seem to love stories set in the UK of the past, even if the past is recent. This year, The Theory of Everything had the misfortune of running against another film about a brilliant British scientist plagued by tragedy, The Imitation Game. My bet: the two movies cancelled each other out, leaving the field to other contenders.
The Theory of Everything (out now on Blu-ray and DVD) begins in 1963 with the bespectacled young Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) racing on his bicycle through the streets of Cambridge. Foreshadows of the future are visible in the fragile physics student’s awkward gait and occasional stumbles. At a student party, with Motown blasting from the hi-fi, Hawking meets love at first in fetching Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones).
The sparks between them illuminate the theory that opposites attract. She loves dancing and he can’t dance. She is a faithful Anglican pursuing a degree in medieval Spanish poetry. He is an atheist searching for “the single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe.” To a philosophical mind, that sounds like Spinoza’s God, but no matter. Working with the new theory of black holes, he is given his doctorate for a dissertation proving that time had a beginning, a concept compatible with Judeo-Christian theology.
Redmayne deserves his Oscar win for Best Actor for portraying Hawking, his hopes dashed by a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, as he descends into bent paralysis. Jones also deserves credit for a solid supporting performance that begins in giddy youth and progresses through mature responsibility, caregiver frustration and romantic heartbreak.
After the halfway mark, Redmayne and Jones become the reason to keep watching. The Theory of Everything’s best moments come early in the jazzy, just-before-The Beatles scenes of campus life and those intoxicating moments when the quest for knowledge and romance coalesce into overpowering fulfillment. The Theory of Everything doesn’t entirely ignore the science and theoretical debate in its final half, but becomes a love story flirting with cliché. The producers apparently didn’t realize that there is an audience for a well-acted film on quantum mechanics?
