I had put off watching The Theory of Everything for a while; the subject matter seemed incredibly depressing, and I was not in the mood to watch yet another biopic upon its release. The market was flooded with biopics last year, and this year's potential Oscar contenders appear to be continuing this trend. Moreover, as a Michael Keaton fan, I felt reluctant to watch the film that beat him at the Oscars this past year. In case you missed it, here is the trailer:
Putting my reservations aside, I finally watched The The Theory of Everything this evening and believe it might be the stuffiest, dullest, and most sanitized biopic I have ever seen--not to mention the only one in which the lead actor is in about one-third of the film. Yes, you read that correctly: Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of beloved astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, was actually not in the film that much. The real main character? Hawking's wife, Jane, played with blandness and dispassion by Felicity Jones.
There is little to admire about this film. The cinematography is the usual teal and orange combination that has saturated so many second rate productions these days. The oranges are aggressively orange, the blues aggressively blue--and poorly lit. There was only one scene that I felt was well shot, in fact, which was when Stephen and Jane kiss for the first time after viewing fireworks--an over used and predictable symbol, certainly, but one that was visually appealing. If only the actors' chemistry had matched the imagery.
Eddie Redmayne's performance felt true and did provoke strong feelings of sympathy and sadness, but is that really what we want from a movie about a beloved figure with a severe disability? Do we really want to pity Stephen Hawking, or do we want to learn about the man--his thoughts, fears, anxieties, joys, and all of the inner workings of his brilliant mind? I'd take the latter, but this film indulges so deeply in the former that it ultimately feels like an experiment in making people with ALS as pitiful as possible. Yet, the film also failed to arouse much, if any pathos. An exercise in cliches, The Theory of Everything is insulting to Stephen in many ways. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As a feminist, I certainly yearn for woman-centric films; however, I felt this movie did itself a disservice by focusing so little on Stephen Hawking as a person and instead concentrating most of its energy, storytelling, and themes on Jane's life as drudgery because she married and altruistically cared for her husband. There are many scenes without Stephen and we are expected to sympathize with Jane for being trapped in a marriage with few rewards. Without question, Jane--and all caretakers, for that matter--suffered truly; however, the film robs Stephen of his humanity by not allowing the audience to understand how he must feel. It's a misconception to believe the caretaker suffers more than the person with the disease. As I watched the film, I kept wondering how Stephen must feel (and have felt in real life) about the horrendous changes his body endured; I wanted to know what was going on in his mind, but the film denies us even a glimpse into his experiences and accidentally fulfills a prediction made by Stephen's doctor. When he is diagnosed with ALS, the doctor explains that Stephen will still have thoughts, but "no one will know what they are"; indeed, we the audience never really do know what they are. All you are actually expected to feel (or know) is a romantic thrill over Jane meeting Jonathan and finding love again--an insult to Stephen Hawking, for certain.
Another flaw in the Jane/Stephen depiction is the lack of any chemistry whatsoever between its leads. Eddie Redmayne did do an excellent job playing a man whose body is deteriorating so rapidly and severely, but his costar seemed bored to be there. I found their romantic scenes together unbelievable (in the true sense of the word, not the superlative), and I stress "romantic" rather than "love" because love, and all its complexities, is perhaps the most interesting part of Stephen's life that was completely sanitized in this film to a distressing and irritating extent.
After Stephen is diagnosed with ALS and he and Jane marry, we are shown a montage shot to resemble a family movie, but this montage skims over their wedding, early married life, and birth of their first child all in a matter of about 90 seconds. I do not at all mean this in a pornographic way, but the refusal to explore Stephen's sexuality (or anything else about his internal thoughts) hurt the film tremendously. Again, I kept wondering how he felt about himself and his wife: What insecurities did he have? What was his attitude toward intimacy? What was their married life like in the beginning--how they communicated, spent time together, worked, talked, interacted? How did they handle the ways his body changed? How did he feel about becoming a father in addition to beating the two-year prognosis he was given? How were the later years different? There are endless questions that the movie refuses to explore. Even when the film implies Stephen has fallen in love with Elaine, his nurse and second wife, we are still denied any exploration of his feelings. True, there are a few humorous comments about how Stephen's, um, "ability" is now "automatic" and we learn he likes to read Penthouse, but there is nothing substantive or honest about this portrayal. The births of his other children are handled with similar stuffy distance, which irritated me and, in a way, is an insult to Stephen Hawking: we can't learn anything about his fears, desires, or emotions in general because, gasp!, he's in a wheelchair; we see Stephen the ALS patient, not Stephen the man. I kept mentally comparing this film to My Left Foot, which is by no means a perfect film, but one that does honor Christie Brown's life more honestly and respectfully than this film does Stephen Hawking.
The movie actually left me unsettled, and I finally realized why hours later: the film objectifies Stephen. We do see the world partly through his perspective...until his diagnosis. After the doctor tells him no one will ever know his thoughts, Stephen becomes an object of pity and scorn and is portrayed as a burden on his wife and family and everyone around him. Indeed, the way we learn ALS is serious is because we see his friend's reaction: Stephen explains what ALS is when his friend comes to his dorm room. As Stephen speaks, the camera focuses on his friend's face and his friend's growing fear and sadness; we identify with the able-bodied character and no longer with Stephen. We feel upset because the friend is upset--not because we understand how Stephen feels. The entire film is like this, privileging the able-bodied perspective over Stephen's, making this one of the most egregiously offensive films to people with physical disabilities, including Stephen Hawking.
In short, this movie is a lifeless, bloodless, and ultimately disparaging morass of dishonest emotion and cheap attempts at pity. I respect Eddie Redmayne tremendously as an actor, but this film really is beneath his talent. I do look forward to his work in the future and believe he has a long and rewarding career ahead of him, but I hope this is not the one role that will define his entire filmography.
Grade: D
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