Almost at the end of The Theory of Everything (in cinemas today), the film hurtles backwards through physicist Stephen Hawking’s life; back through tracheotomies, twisted bones, wheelchairs, walking sticks, back to the tweedy, jolly hockey-sticks world of Cambridge where, in the 1960s, he met a young poetry student, Jane Wilde and fell in love and everything was sweet, so SWEET. Chaps in cardigans, girls in gloves and bows. I watched the roll-back feeling ridiculously relieved; this is what I had cringed for through the whole film, a reprieve from the awful, grinding inevitability of Hawking’s fate. It’s just so bloody tragic.
The real Stephen Hawking with the real Jane (nee Wilde) Hawking.
Hawking’s story has been relentlessly told and, even if it were not, it’s there in his famously tilted, frozen face. His first wife, Jane’s story though; not so much. In his shadow for so many years, I assumed what she must be like. And, I was wrong if this film is right. Pious? Saintly? A bleeding heart? No. She was a pretty young romantic who made a fateful choice. By the end of the film, if Hawking is inspiring (Is the pope catholic?), Jane Hawking is quietly Dalai Lama-esque. (Because I say it’s a word.)
Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as Stephen and Jane Hawking
The film, directed by James March, was adapted by writer Anthony McCarten from Jane Hawking’s own book; Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen. One scene crystalises her sliding door moment at Cambridge. Played intuitively by Felicity Jones, she watches the newly diagnosed Hawking lurching like a crazed puppet around a croquet lawn. He is – rather nobly – trying to scare her away and, by the terror flickering in her face, is succeeding. But, she stays. Perhaps if she could wind back time like a film now, the real Jane would run, guiltfully but fast, and Mr. Hawking’s life would be dramatically different. But, she stayed.
In reality, Mr. Hawking’s prognosis at the time was two years; he expected to die. And, I assume Jane Wilde’s initial mental commitment to his total care, was that too. But, well, the rest is history. Years, sticks, chairs, Dalek voice machines, feeding, bathing, toileting, and three children later, she was still there, having clocked up no more than a a couple of tearful pleas for help, a minor breakdown and a near-affair. What a woman.
The Hawkings.
Eddie Redmayne as Mr. Hawking is genuinely marvellous: the new Benedict Cumberbatch (another convincing Hawking), with a lank physique that he lurches, twists and finally, crumples into that final posture of motor neuron disease. A gifted actor, his Hawking is near-metamorphic if you compare it to his – astonishingly good looking – real self.(See main picture, top.)
The real Hawking is reportedly an infectiously jolly fellow who has smiled relentlessly all his life and Redmayne uses his similar pillow lips to convey this even as he also softens and eventually freezes them into a version of the real Mr. Hawking’s (almost) unreadable grin.
I crept into the cinema-dark with some trepidation to watch The Theory of Everything – not the most uplifting story, and I already know how it turns out. But I left, a little moved, a little amazed, and a little disgusted with myself for whinging, earlier, about the (temporary) pain in my back. Not a bad outcome.
Footnote 1: Because I know you want to know: the mechanics of producing those Hawking children is tackled, apparently to sate widespread curiousity when Stephen Hawking confides to a friend who has wondered aloud about the symptoms of advance motor neuron disease: “Different system, old chap; it’s all automatic…” So, there you go.
Footnote 2: The film has received a swag of awards and five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress.
Footnote 3: Main picture, top: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones at the premiere of The Theory of Everything last month.
Review by Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
