It’s the year 1963, and Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is attending Cambridge, a young man full of hope and questions. “What if the secrets of the universe had something to do with sex?” asks his nerdy friends. Hawking is a science geek, though Jane (Felicity Jones) one of his classmates, sees him as some sort of genius, and believes in his cosmologist potential. He may just have an equation, though his first one just might be love.
Within the first four minutes of the film we’re captured by Hawking’s sincere squint of his eyes, his over-sized glasses, and the tip of his mop-top head. Within fifteen minutes of the film, as Hawking drops his cup of coffee, and spills his champagne, we move quickly to the knowledge that he has a motor-neuron disease better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Jane marries him immediately and a baby follows…they have little time to waste. He has only two years to live, though his Einstein-esque passion is just getting started.
But as his walk turns to crippled and his body crumbles, the expressions on Hawking’s face..the twinkle in his tell-all eyes…we realize his Black Hole equation of the universe is just revving up. As an audience we get angry. Just as his mind was exploding with theories, he gets ill, his body closing into its own black hole, which seems so unfair (is life fair?) while lesser humans walk the planet giving us nothing but a useless void.
His wife, Jane is soft and solemn, suffering in silence, never complaining or fighting back. Instead what she teaches us is where there is life there is hope.
Redmayne was a bit player is Tom Hooper’s Les Miserable and the love interest of Marilyn in My Week with Marilyn, but not since Daniel Day Lewis’s performance in My Left Foot has someone commanded a role with such vigor and detail. The Academy voters love this type of performance…British, a handicap, and a history lesson. It’s golden. The only thing against Redmayne is the fact he’s a newbie and usually one has to earn their gold.
Had this been a movie about science instead of romance, the filmmakers would have lost us, but what is so incredible is that as Hawking debilitates with each scene, we must remind ourselves Redmayne is only acting. And that’s what’s so sensational…we never feel like this is a performance! Instead we feel what’s inside his heart, his head but mainly his soul…his need to forge on in science until the end.
A nice movie, an intelligent movie, in the life of a man who defies ever expectation both personally and scientifically…a movie that might not be the best of the year, but certainly delivers the best Oscar winning performances. ♔ ♕ ♚ 1/2