The Theory of Everything

Look Who’s Hawking

The Theory of Everything
2014  UK
Directed by James Marsh 
UK cinema release print.

Almost every year these days, on my birthday, I take my parents out to see a movie at our local cinema. It’s rare they go to the cinema and probably only go with me between 2 and 4 times a year. Usually, to be honest, it’s to a film that I know one of them would like, rather than something I would be happiest seeing myself and, this year, I decided on the new biopic of Stephen Hawking, The Theory Of Everything, because I knew my father would probably really like this one (and I can always buy my mum Paddington on Blu Ray for Mother’s Day, after all).

Now, I’m really not a religious person and I don’t understand the willingness of anybody to believe or support any of the organised religions of the world... which seem to be crafted by the hand of man as a tool for control at the best of times. However, just because I have that view, it doesn’t mean I rule out the existence of God, or a God-like being or, possibly, a God-like energy in the universe. I like to keep an open mind about such things. Many people seem to think that Hawking’s scientific theories preclude God or a God-like entity in the mix and that seems to be the same tack that this film takes. One thing I will say on this subject, however, is this... Hawking’s has got motor neuron disease. When it was first properly diagnosed in the early to mid-sixties (going by the film here) he was given just two years to live. It’s now over fifty years since then and he is still with us. If ever someone wanted to try and show some evidence that there is a deity watching out for certain people on Earth or the possibility of a grand scheme of things then the survival of Stephen Hawking, the greatest scientific mind of our generation, would definitely be considered by most people... well... a bit of a miracle.

The film is based on the memoirs of Hawking as told by his once and longtime wife, Jane Hawking, brilliantly portrayed by Felicity Jones. Hawking himself is a tour-de-force of a performance by Eddie Redmayne, who I first saw when he was playing Colin Clark in My Week With Marilyn (reviewed here). He was pretty good in the former film but he really does turn in a gobsmacking performance here. If he was just portraying Hawking in one specific phase of his battle with motor neuron disease then it would be no less brilliant but certainly understandable. However, with the timing of the film spanning from around 1962 to the present day, with Hawking seen in various stages of the disease... when you take into account that these thing are not shot in chronological order... well, this performance must get some kind of recognition when it comes to award season, I reckon.

Felicity Jones has an easier time of it, I would guess, but her performance here is no less subtle...

I once had a really good friend. I’ve somehow managed to fall out with her now but, in fact, the lady I’m thinking of was almost certainly the best friend I’ll ever have and I can’t imagine that ever not being true, regardless of the fact that I don’t see her any more. When we first started talking, years ago, in a pub rendezvous, I became aware that she was looking after someone very sick and, my reaction to that news was honest and it’s probably something that someone in the position of caring for someone above and beyond the call of duty is used to, coming from that kind of situation... I immediately started trying to think of ways in which the person she was caring for could be helped and try to understand what the sick person was going through. However, it was made clear to me, as that particular conversation wore on, that the person who is actually caring for someone and having to do a lot more than a standard workload in their relationship (this on top of a full time job, no less) is a person who also needs the understanding and support of those around her/him. That role gets taken for granted a lot but it is exhausting and it’s something that the one being cared for is too wrapped up in illness to appreciate that often... and that can be a wearing, grueling, big deal of an issue sometimes. And it’s something I tend to consider more (I hope) when I meet people in a similar situation (as I have on occasion).

All of this kind of responsibility was brilliantly performed by Felicity Jones’ performance as Jane and, again, like Eddie Redmayne’s performance, it’s a slow burn where the actress has had to cope with playing the gradual build up from doing all the extra work caring for her on-screen husband to not coping with all that life is flinging at her. And again, it’s something she’s had to film out of sequence but with a degree of subtlety so that, when it’s all put together in linear fashion... and it’s a, mostly, surprisingly linear film, to be fair... then we see the gradual build up as all the elements line up against her and wear her down over time.

So... cracking performances by both the male and female leads, in this one.

It has to be said, though, that the film relies almost purely on these performances to the exclusion of much else. Sure, there are some nicely elegant set pieces and some lovely shot designs but there seems to be a lack of interest in experimentation in the way the movie is put together so that, even when a specific moment comes up at a Q & A scene near the end of the movie and the on-screen Hawking appears to do something he would never be able to do in real life, it never really takes you by surprise and I thought that where the director did try and use the language of cinema a little by running the film backwards as a metaphor, perhaps, for Hawking’s theories, it wasn’t really all that successful or as interesting as it might have been... at least not to this audience member.

However, one thing the film certainly is, is it’s a more than competent, British-made biopic with a very well written script and very strong performances so, frankly, anything else would have just been extra icing on the cake anyway. Similarly, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score was appropriate and certainly easy on the ear but, I couldn’t help but wondering what it might have been if they had maybe employed the services of a composer like Alexandre Desplat, to be honest, but again... it was still pretty good and too much icing can be fattening at the best of times.

At the end of the day, The Theory Of Everything is a really neatly put together and powerful dramatisation of the majority of the life of one of the greatest scientific thinkers in history. It’s something that British cinema and television seem to do extraordinarily well and this entertaining and moving film is certainly no exception. Definitely worth a look if you don’t go in expecting too much from it structurally or are anticipating semiotic acrobatics. Certainly something which will hook you in from the start, though, and the performances are well worth the watch. Don’t waste any time contemplating not seeing this one... you never know what time is going to do to you next.

Rush

No Good Speed Goes Unpunished

Rush
2013 UK/Germany
Directed by Ron Howard
Studio Canal   Blu Ray Zone B 

You know, I really never expected to be reviewing a movie like Rush for this blog. It’s not that I don’t like Ron Howard because, even with the spectre of Richie Cunningham from Happy Days hanging over him, I actually think he’s a pretty great director. He makes popular films for Hollywood (although this one is actually a British/German co-production, I was surprised to learn) in a very professional and competent way. Films which always have a sense of emotional engagement inherent within them. In fact, when you take my favourite of his movies, Angels and Demons, the sequel to his adaptation of The Da Vinci Code (and which you can find reviewed here), I have to give him credit for taking what is basically a not too subtly dressed up version of the tired old “run the policeman around key points in a city looking for the bomb before it goes off” plot and turning it into a thoroughly entertaining spectacle.

The reason I am surprised to find myself reviewing this particular movie is because, my fondness for John Frankenheimer’s movie Grand Prix aside, I have no real interest in either motor sports or, really, cars in general unless they happen to be associated with a film or TV series. I remember having a small Corgi or Dinky toy of Emmerson Fitipaldi’s black John Player Special when I was a kid and a basic Scalextric track but... that’s where the interest started and ended I’m afraid.

My dad, however, is a different kettle of fish. Over the years, especially the last decade or so, it’s become very clear to me that the man loves watching motor racing and follows it with a kind of “passion hidden behind a veneer of indifference” which I’d never really noticed before that period. So, when it came time for the bizarrely conceived, commercial celebration known as Father’s Day, I slipped a copy of Rush, a film I knew he’d not seen (neither had I), in with his ritual bottle of Port. And, of course, since it was Father’s Day... well... I had to watch it with him, didn’t I?

The film deals with the rivalry between two racing drivers, James Hunt (played by The Mighty Thor... um... I mean Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (played by Daniel Brühl, who was so good in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds) in the six years prior to and culminating in the 1976 Grand Prix. Now I kinda remember Hunt and Lauda after the fact, but only as names looking back from this end of the historical telescope... although I think Hunt may have appeared on television shows during my childhood. The thing is, when Niki Lauda had his famous “near death” crash in 1976, I was dealing with a car crash problem of my own. I was eight years old and I had been standing with my mum, talking to some friends on the pavement at a crossroads in Edmonton (firmly off the road and far back from the kerb, I’ll have you know) when two cars from the opposite sides of the crossroads hit each other at speed and both ploughed up the pavement and into us all. I probably had the most serious injury out of everyone involved in that my jaw got broken (I was wearing a thick duffle coat with a hood up and it would have been my head rolling if I hadn’t been wearing that, the doctors told me) and because it was broken in such a way that the doctors couldn’t wire it, I had to spend a couple of years off of school. Unlike Lauda I wasn’t permanently scarred, at least not in any way which is visible to the naked eye, but obviously James Hunt and Niki Lauda were the furthest people from my mind at the time... which means I knew relatively little about what qualifies as story content in this film before going in full throttle and watching it.

Howard’s film is something of a more intimate look at the characters in play in this real life drama. It  feels epic because, compressing the six years into a couple of hours means you have to make a lot of broad strokes and then skip to the next important thing... but the film really gives you a sense of who these people were (Niki Lauda claims the film is totally accurate, although insists people used to make more of the rivalry between the two than was actually there... which figures, knowing the way the press and publicity machine works) in a more up close and personal way than you might expect from a film looking as slick and Hollywoodified as this. So the characters and the relationships they make with other people is the focus of the movie and a camaraderie between the two main characters is often felt lurking behind their words. The director and the two lead actors do really well to capture this quality in the performance. Both are likeable characters and, even though it’s played up that nobody really liked Lauda, you can feel where each of the protagonists is coming from in their quest to win the world championship and I felt really pulled into the movie.

The racing scenes are another matter in that, for a film with a back drop of Formula One motor racing, they are few and far between and over very quickly. They’re good... don’t get me wrong. Shot and edited in a way that both conveys the speed and danger while giving you a feeling of excitement and anticipation, thanks in part to Hans Zimmer’s appropriately propulsive scoring. They’re no match for graphic designer Saul Bass’ wonderful racing montage sequences in the aforementioned Grand Prix (sorry, I can’t help but compare the two here) but they are great pieces of “speed on film” machismo... however, they just don’t go on for long enough and there’s not enough of them... at least that’s the impression I got.

Now I’m not saying this is wrong for the film, far from it. It may be that editing in longer race sequences would have harmed the drama and the flow of the film and Howard has probably made a shrewd decision here... but just go onto this one forewarned not to expect too much of the “vroom, vroom” in this movie. I read recently that the original draft of the script had been written without being commissioned and, because the writer assumed that anybody picking it up would not have much budget at their disposal, deliberately excluded any racing scenes throughout the whole of that first draft. Of course, when you get someone like Ron Howard on board, you’re going to get a hefty budget, I should think. It might have been that the insertion of racing scenes was a bit of a tightrope walk for balance with the dramatic writing so I’m guessing not a whole heap was done to change that in later drafts... relatively speaking.

And anyone who thinks Howard is going to take a big huggy feely approach to all the aspects of the story can think again. The scenes where the burnt beyond recognition Niki Lauda, barely surviving the human inferno he became for over sixty seconds, is having his lungs repeatedly vacuumed out in intensive care, really gives you a sense of the downside of the risk involved in this kind of “profession” and, also, the quite nasty way in which James Hunt beats up a reporter for his verbal attack on the post-crash Lauda after a press conference is also quite brutal in its intensity. Howard of course, being that he’s Howard, still manages to make these sequences also look really nice but... not to the point where they are too glossed over.

I was really taken with Rush and, by the end of it, felt that the two main protagonists were both honourable and likeable people who had both been dealt slightly unfortunate blows by life. I was educated a little by the dramatised “on screen history lesson” of the film but, more than that, entertained and enthralled by a picture about a subject I’m not much interested in... aka, all and any sports (except for maybe Rollerball, that’s a cool sport). If you’re into motor racing you’ll probably really like this movie and, if like me it’s not your thing, well... I reckon this movie is still worth some of your time. Sail on past that chequered flag as a fan of movies rather than anything else and I reckon this film will end up qualifying for you for sure. One to watch.