The Theory of Everything (***1/4)

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This movie is probably slightly better if you don’t know about Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne). For those who do, the story should seem familiar. Covering roughly 25 years, it can only sketch in broad outline Hawking’s major life events — the diagnosis (ALS), the dissertation (on black holes), the debilitation, and the devilishly difficult bestselling book (A Brief History of Time) that made him a household name. Perhaps less familiar will be the love story that director James Marsh focuses on. The movie is in fact based on Jane Hawking’s book.

It’s a story that truly begins after a typical romantic story ends. The scenes in which Stephen, a doctoral student at Cambridge with some unexplained physical lapses, courts Jane (Felicity Jones) are charming — Stephen’s offbeat posture, sly wit, and (later-useful) economy of expression are already apparent — but a prelude. It’s one thing to pledge fidelity to a sick man and another to become the sole caregiver for an invalid who almost literally cannot lift a finger to help around the house.

In all long-term arrangements, the romantic must make room for the domestic. This is that ordinary story, combined with the extraordinary intelligence of Hawking and the fact that time, Hawking’s special area of interest, is not his friend. His speech increasingly slurring, his movements increasingly limited, he yet defies the survival odds. It’s thus an inspirational story that, nonetheless, suggests at once the horror of such a disease and the magnitude of the gift Jane gave him. Marsh, gently eliding over the decades, doesn’t peer deep into the souls of his characters but movingly portrays the way their relationship changes with time, perhaps not as expected. The actors are very good, with Redmayne utterly convincing in evoking the entire range of Hawking’s physical decline, then using his eyebrows to convey emotion and thought. Those interested in more than the barest outline of Hawking’s ideas will want to turn to his books, or Errol Morris’s documentary version of A Brief History of Time, but this is a fine general-interest drama that avoid the clichés of disease movies.

IMDb link

viewed 11/5/14 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 11/6/14

Amazing Grace (***1/4)

? Michael Apted’s biopic of William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) tells the story of the politician who perhaps did the most of any individual in ending the slave trade in the British Empire. A friend and contemporary of William Pitt, who became prime minister at 24, the young Wilberforce was influenced by Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell), a fierce abolitionist, and by a religious epiphany he had, eventually dedicating much of his life to the cause. Also inspiring him was John Newton (Albert Finney), who had penned the lyrics to the title hymn when he was a slave trader but years later became a minister and spoke out against human trafficking. The script was written by Michael Knight, last credited with the brilliant Dirty Pretty Things.
+ For Americans, this provides a look at a less-familiar slavery story and the way that moral arguments can occasionally hold sway over economic ones. Indeed, Wilberforce’s story is not only an inspirational tale of passion in action, but one of practical politics used wisely. Knight accurately shows the persistence it took to, on one hand, raise awareness, and on the other overcome both patriotic and practical arguments centered around the damage to the empire. Apted’s dynamic rendering of the scenes in the House of Commons is masterful, with Michael Gambon standing out as the influential Lord Charles Fox. Apted and Knight also take in other aspects of Wilberforce’s personality, like his love of animals. He comes off as likeable and quirky. Wilberforce’s extremely accelerated courtship of his wife becomes a framing device for the story. Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour makes a credible screen debut as Olauduh Equiano, an ex-slave who wrote a bestseller about his experiences.
- It might be asking too much, but just perhaps the scope of the movie might have been broadened slightly. There are only passing mentions of the widespread grassroots campaign that arose contemporaneously with Wilberforce’s actions, this being much the focus of 2005’s Bury the Chains, by Adam Hochschild, which gives greater credit to Clarkson. Indeed, Clarkson’s influence on Wilberforce seems minimized; Wilberforce arrives fully formed, with little hint of what led him to his firm convictions that were shared by so few. Clarkson is portrayed as perhaps too fanatical to get things done, yet something besides practicality inspired the sugar boycott that the movie mentions. In its understandable inclination to canonize Wilberforce, the movie misses something.
= ***1/4 A historically important story that feels contemporary yet authentic.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/23/07

reviewed 2/23/07