Friday, January 16, 2015

The Theory of Everything (a movie review post)

I'll start by making it clear that I am not a Hawking fan. In general, I am not a fan of science that has a greater relation to the kind of "science" that Greek philosophers did than to actual science. But that has nothing to do with the movie, which is kind of unfortunate, actually, since the movie barely touched on anything to do with science other than that Hawking was working on his PhD in physics.

In fact, the movie doesn't seem to have much to do with anything. The trailers seemed to indicate the movie was going to be focusing in Hawking's survival of his early onset motor neuron disease, and, maybe, the movie looks like it's heading in that direction at one point. Hawking meets Jane (the movie opens with that), they fall in love, Hawking falls on his face and discovers he's going to die. He has two years. Jane proclaims, "We'll fight this together." And, well, that's it. They just glide on through and never mention the fact that Hawking failed to die or why he lived. So, basically, the thing that might have made the movie interesting is left behind as if it was nothing more than a conversation over breakfast, "Oh, and by the way, we'll fight your disease together. Have a good day at work doing physics."

I did become curious, though, as to why Hawking did survive, and I tried to find out, but there's not a lot out there on the subject, at least not any information that requires a lot more time to find than I was willing to put into it. Basically, though, it sounds like the general attitude is, "Oh, he just didn't die." Did he have better care (Jane) than other people? Was it love? Was it determination? Was it just that he's so smart? None of those things are touched on in the movie, and I didn't see anything in a quick survey about Hawking, either. He just lived. Kind of like Harry Potter.

As far as the movie goes, there was nothing compelling about it. It's not that it was boring (that would be something that could be said about it, at least), it just wasn't anything. If the power had gone out or the projector broken or, for any reason, the movie had to be stopped, I would not have felt enough interest to wonder what happened. When it comes down to it, more than anything else, the movie is about what a horrible deal Jane struck when she said she wanted whatever time she and Stephen would have together, but, then, she didn't expect that to be more than two years.

In effect, the movie is about the horrible marriage that seems so common amongst most couples and hardly needs to have Stephen Hawking in it to drive that point home. And if it has a point, it's probably during the fantasy sequence at the end where Hawking imagines himself walking again and gives his "where there is life, there is hope" speech. I don't think I needed a movie to make that point, and this movie certainly doesn't support that point. Not in any way that matters.

For some reason, people seem to think that Eddie Redmayne did some kind of spectacular job playing Hawking but, mostly, he just sat in a chair with a grin plastered to his face. To say that I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing impressive about this movie, least of all Redmayne's performance. As to why it's being considered for any kind of Oscar has everything to do with the person it's based on and nothing to do with the merits of the film, of which it has very few. This has Heath Ledger written all over it to me, i.e., getting an undeserved Oscar for which there would have been no nomination if he hadn't died. Not that Hawking is dead, but it's the same kind of sympathy.

Maybe, I'm a heartless person, but I don't have that kind of sympathy. Redmayne hasn't delivered an astounding performance, and people wouldn't think he had if he was playing someone we'd never heard of. But, you know, it's Hawking, and we all feel bad for Hawking, so "Oooh! He was so good!"
Sorry, I cry "Bullshit!"

23 comments:

  1. Not a Hawkins fan either, so wasn't interested in this film. Knowing it's pointless and almost boring makes me want to watch it even less.
    It's really an odd year for Oscar nominations, isn't it?

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    1. Alex: There are not a lot of strong movies this year,

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    1. Pat: I don't know that I would say that but, then, biopics are not my normal thing.

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  3. Watching the previews, I had hoped the same as you: explanations for his longevity. Although, I would watch for the marriage conflict - that is always interesting to me - I probably wouldn't pay good money to see it in the theater. It will be on cable TV soon enough.

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    1. dolorah: See, there's not even really much of the marriage conflict in it. It's just in the background.

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  4. Your view is interesting, but I still want to see the movie. I feel bad for Jane. She stayed with him and then he dumped her. He definitely received superior care, but I don't know if that's why he still lives. When The Hurricane went to Cambridge, she got lost in the maths building soon after her arrival. She discovered she was next to The Great Man's office. She looked around the corner and saw his assistant and the back of Hawking's chair, but she never saw Hawking. Her British boyfriend--who got all of his degrees including a doctorate at Cambridge, unlike the measly Part III she earned--saw Hawking many times. He didn't seem Hawking impressed. He really didn't seem impressed by anything. Suits me that she changed her mind about marrying him. The boyfriend, not Hawking.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Janie: I feel bad for Jane, too, in a way. She got more than she bargained for, for sure, but I think she sort of asked for it. There's a whole psychology to the "I'll stay with you till the end" thing when you think the end is near, and she definitely was doing that martyr thing. It just didn't go her way.

      There are a couple of interesting places in the movie, like where Hawking basically tells her to get the "help" she needs, but she is so moved by his "selflessness" that she doesn't do it, so, again, she put herself into the position she was in. It's hard for me to be sympathetic to that.

      But, yes, it's not right that she was "forced" to stay with him until he finally moved on and that him moving on was, really, seen as perfectly okay, but she would have suffered socially if she had left him.

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  5. I read the review with interest and even the comments were fascinating. I'm curious about why Jane needs "help," but overall, I think I'll stay away from this one. It's a shame to spend so many millions making a movie with no plot - even if it's a biography. :P

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    1. Lexa: Well, on the surface, she just needs help with Hawking and the kids. They didn't have a nurse or any kind of help for a long time, so it was just Jane taking care of two kids and Hawking.
      But, in the movie, when Hawking says that Jane needs help, that's not what he's talking about.

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  6. I was intrigued by this film when it came out. Then one of my more thoughtful students mentioned she was going to see it. I asked for her to report back afterward. Her review was to the point: don't waste your money.

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    1. TAS: That's my assessment, too. I wouldn't even waste the time to rent it. You'd do just as well to spend your time watching one of your neighbors through a window. Actually, that would probably be more interesting.

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  7. Wow, that swipe at Heath Ledger at the end! I always thought his Oscar was deserved; if there was a more iconic villain in the last 20 years, I can't think of who it was, and he reinvented the Joker in a way that nobody had in 70 years or Batman comics. I think his death just guaranteed he'd get the award.

    Anyway: I read "A Brief History Of Time" and like everyone else who did, failed to really understand it. I'm not sure where I stand on Hawking; I don't know enough to say if he's brilliant or not. Everyone says he is, but since when is brilliance a popularity contest.

    I do know that he seems to have just taken to saying provocative things, possibly just to get headlines. In the past few years he's announced that both artificial intelligence and the seach for the Higgs Boson could destroy the universe, for example. That kind of seems like publicity hunting to me. I know nobody is supposed to say bad stuff about sick people, but being sick doesn't immunize you from criticism.

    On the other hand, Hawking doesn't crap all over popular science-y stuff like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, so I favor him over Neil.

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  8. Briane: Ledger had an unimpressive career capped by a lucky role as the Joker and unlucky death. His performance as the Joker is more due to Nolan than to himself.

    I believe that Hawking's brilliant. However, he has done absolutely nothing with that brilliance other than come up with unprovable ideas. I can come up with unprovable ideas. That some of his idea are quasi-accepted has nothing to do with them being right. After all, it was totally accepted for centuries that the Earth was the center of the universe.

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  9. Well, I have absolutely no interest at all in this movie. But thanks to your review, my opinion is unchanged.

    But Briane's hatred of Neil DeGrasse Tyson reminds me of the sort of thing I'd only seen before on an episode of Seinfeld. It freaks me out.

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  10. Rusty: Whoa... It's a rare sighting of Rusty Carl! Maybe Hawking is magic to drag Rusty out of his mancave to make a comment!
    Next, we'll find out that Rusty has worked out the equation for the theory of everything.

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  11. I'm not really interested in seeing this in the first place, which seems to surprise people, seeing as how my dad has the same disease (ALS). As far as his longevity, ALS is such that doctors can't give a good estimate. They can try. They change my dad's all the time. His decline accelerated rapidly recently, so they've changed the number back down again. As far as care, I don't think it had anything to do with care. Then again, I'm no expert. My dad has done extensive research and is doing everything he can to try to prolong it. He got about 6 more months of "quality of life" than they said he would have. Is that from his attempts or just because that's the route his ALS took? Again, impossible to tell. They don't know an awful lot about ALS, the causes, the prognosis, etc. Most cases are two years to death. My dad just passed two. He holds Hawking up as a cause for hope, while my mom cries at the sight of Hawking, so... Anyway, maybe I just shouldn't be commenting on something related to something so close to me. I still don't intend to see the movie. :) Part of me wants to see if they show the progression so I can know what to expect with my dad. I've got his book on my Amazon wish list for that reason. But that's all I really want to know from those sources, as I have no interest in the science, so I doubt it would be worth it. He has long said he doesn't want to be the poster child for ALS, and I get that. It's probably best, as his case is so extremely rare. Like I said, most people get only two years from diagnosis. He's had far longer than that and still seems to be going steady. The science he's so fascinated with is probably the one thing keeping him from dementia (a serious risk for folks with ALS, as it's hard to get mental stimulation when you're trapped in your body). I just don't know. I wish I did. I don't understand why they'd make a movie about a love affair gone wrong with this as the background. Capitalizing on the publicity the ice bucket challenge brought about? But they would have had to have been filming this before that, so it's just that, for whatever reason, this is suddenly the fascinating disease. On the one hand, that's good. Most people didn't know what it was before. Really, few know much about it now, but they know it exists, which is more than was true before. On the other hand, it seems to have made ALS the target of more nastiness than before, too. What did Hawking do to become so popular out of nowhere? Is it just from bringing attention to himself like you mentioned? Can you tell I've been thinking about this stuff quite a bit? Maybe he's bored. Maybe he's picking fights for stimulation. Maybe he's near the end and hasn't said so publicly. Who knows? But yeah, the movie...meh.

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    1. Shannon: Unfortunately, they don't do much to show the progression of the disease, not in any real sense. You see him move from canes to a wheel chair and from the wheel chair to remote controlled wheel chair and from speaking to his devices, but there's no focus on it and no explanation. It's just there, it seems, to highlight how much more difficult Jane's life became as they went along.

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  12. I've been ambivalent about everything concerning this movie other than the title which I thought sounded cool without knowing what the film was about. After finding out the subject matter I became even more ambivalent. Now your hilarious assessment of this film confirmed some of the reasons for my ambivalence. Bravo for not jumping on the critics bandwagon and telling it like you saw it which would probably be the way I'd see it if I saw it and if I do decide to see it when it comes to CD I can imagine my wife will be sawing logs as I see it with my head grumbling similar thoughts that you've expressed.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out

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  13. Oh, by the way, if they make a film about Roger Ebert, which I think would make an excellent film story, I wonder if you'll give that thumbs up or down.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out

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    1. Lee: Well, I always liked Ebert when I was a kid and watched him and Siskel do their show. As for a film, it would really depend upon what they did with it.

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  14. I'm with most on your list, sort of 'meh' about the whole idea of it. It seems weird to do a biography of any person still alive. But that could just be me.

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    1. Alex H: Actually, I agree about making a movie about someone when they're still alive. I just keep thinking "why?"

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