He is drawing comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, and I think that’s fair, considering how little, character-wise, Redmayne is given to work with and how much more brutally self-sacrificial Day-Lewis’ Method performances are. But Redmayne, as Hawking, is the obvious candidate for critical attention with his exacting and highly physical performance. Her performance, full of patience and pert meaningful smiles, is as nuanced as the script and direction are not. Charlie Cox is subtle and sympathetic as choir leader-turned-home nurse Jonathan, even as he makes a cuckold out of the not-unwitting Hawking, and Felicity Jones gives Jane colour and likeability. The actors – to say nothing of a doubtlessly dedicated crew – seem to be the only ones working hard to elevate the material. (Hawking himself was guarded about his reaction to the film he described Jones, playing his ex-wife, with one word – “charming” – and conducted an apparently dreadfully awkward interview with the earnest Redmayne, who embarrassed himself by talking about astrology to a world-famous astrophysicist.) James Marsh does few favours with his direction, as well: in an early scene, when Stephen discovers the first shaky-handed signs of what is to come by knocking over a cup of coffee to the heady strains of Wagner, the effect is cringingly melodramatic. Unfortunately, Anthony McCarten’s screenplay glosses over the messy moments that define the day-to-day interaction of such a relationship, and paints their story in nearly defamatory broad strokes. His infatuation with literature student Jane (button-cute Felicity Jones) coincides with the first stirrings of his impending motor neuron disease, and we follow them as they marry, build a family, and finally separate due to the strain the disease places on them both. The film begins in the 1960s, when a young and able-bodied Hawking (a very admirable Eddie Redmayne) is studying astrophysics at Cambridge. But that’s just a theory – you’ll have to see it as well before we can make this an empirical exercise. I haven’t found a theory to explain everything in the universe, but I have come up with a theory about The Theory of Everything: it’s a shallow, tame adaptation of Jane Hawking’s memoir, diluted to the point of tedium in order to appeal to a broad audience, content to pass over the interesting and challenging aspects of Stephen Hawking’s life in order to present a clichéd love plot. Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything
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