I’m not sure what I was expecting when I went to go see The Theory Of Everything. This film is about as blatant as Oscar bait
gets, being billed as the uplifting story of an upper-middle class English guy
overcoming a physical impairment in order to achieve greatness. To those who don’t know, this is the Stephen
Hawking biopic, so you can fill in the appropriate blanks in order to get a
picture of precisely the sort of story you are in for. Except this is worse than your standard
inspiration porn, because the film has some underlying themes about disability
that, while I’m sure are unintentional, transform it from what should have been
a mildly inoffensive glimpse into the life of one of the greatest thinkers of
the twentieth century into a commentary that makes Mr. Hawking’s disability his
defining characteristic.
I think the problem comes from where the screenplay was
adapted from. This film was based on a
biography by Hawking’s now-ex-wife Jane, and though I don’t want to blame the
source material itself (having never read it), I do think it is informative of
the film’s troublesome perspective. Stephen
has the most screen time for the first third of the film, establishing him as a
funny and awkward man with a passion for cosmology; however, Jane takes on the
role of protagonist as the film enters its second act. After Stephen is diagnosed with motor neuron
disease, Jane steps into the forefront as Stephen’s caregiver, and the film’s
primary conflict becomes her struggle to keep her family together. This feels more than a little disingenuous
for being a film where the main selling-point was to catch a glimpse of the
life of Stephen Hawking, as his
character’s arc is little more than an obligatory progression from career
landmark to milestone of physical degradation, rinse and repeat.
And therein lies the main problem with the film. Because the primary narrative focus is on
Jane’s emotional torment for most of the film, with allusions to an affair with
an assisting caregiver, Stephen becomes little more than an obstacle keeping
Jane from finding happiness. When
Stephen’s achievements are necessarily touched upon, the emphasis is not that
he formulated a theory on the nature of time and space, but that he formulated
a theory on the nature of time and space despite
his disability. This is only further
punctuated by the fact that the film’s climactic moment is when Stephen tells
Jane that it is alright to finally leave him, basically freeing her from her
burden. The film’s primary conflict is
resolved when Stephen acknowledges that his disability has been holding her
back. If it isn’t readily apparent to
you why that is problematic, you may need to check yourself on some of your
able-bodied privilege.
And yet, I’m not quite sure how the film could have avoided
this pitfall, as I’m not familiar enough (nor did the film make me familiar
enough) with Mr. Hawking’s life to say in what ways his personal struggles
could have been greater emphasized without couching everything in terms of
“overcoming” disability. After all,
nobody is going to see the film to see Mr. Hawking crunch equations for hours
on end; rather, everyone knows him as the physicist in the wheelchair with the
robot voice, and it’s that shallow, surface understanding of the man that the
film panders to. There has been a lot of
buzz over Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking, and though the actor certainly
has the physicist’s mannerisms pretty solidly pegged, that quite aptly
demonstrates that the primary praise for the film derives from an able-bodied
actor’s portrayal of disability, not its portrayal of a multi-dimensional man with disability.
At the end of the day, The
Theory Of Everything seems to have its heart in the right place, but
stumbles over its Oscar ambitions by placing emphasis on the wrong aspects of a
great man’s life. I recognize that it
would be impossible to make a film about Stephen Hawking without placing some
emphasis on his disability, yet this film goes after that low-hanging fruit a
bit too overzealously for my taste, making what should have been a single
aspect of Mr. Hawking’s life into an attraction where we can mourn his wife’s
lost opportunities. I’d recommend
passing this one up.
I’ve somehow managed to find an awards-season dud right out
the gate. Have you come across any
yet? Leave your thought in the comments
below.
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