The Theory of Everything.

Sometimes you don’t really fancy a film, but go and see it anyway and then regret it. This weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club screening was one of these films. But thankfully I did not regret it, in fact it turned out a lot better than I had expected!

 

Pre diagnoses at Cambridge. 

Superbly introduced by Rachel Findlay The Theory of Everything (2014) played to a packed house and was very well received by an attentive audience. Rachel gave us a few pointers and some background to the making of this rather unusual love story, although we all knew the story of Stephan Hawking and how he suffers from a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis better known as motor neurone disease that has gradually paralysed him over the decades since he was given 2 to 3 years to live in 1963 when it was first diagnosed and, as we are all aware from his recent appearance at the BAFTA’s where the movie won three awards[1] he is currently in his seventies.

 

Jane and Stephan get married in 1965.

This rather moving and emotional film deals with his life through his first wife Jane Wilde (played in what should have been a award winning role by Felicity Jones) who he was married to for thirty years and who gave him three children. The period takes us from the time they first met at Cambridge in 1963 until basically their divorce and his subsequent marriage to Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake). Its based on Jane’s revised memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephan Hawking.  Strangely despite Hawking debilitating disease Eddie Redmayne’s award winning success never lets this character get angry and you also suspect from his remarkable portrayal that Hawking never quite realised the affect that it was having on his nearest and dearest.  

 

Now unable to speak Jane experiments with alternate methods.

Director James March, who you may now from Man on Wire (2008) a documentary film that chronicled French man Philippe Petit’s high wire walk between the Twin Towers of New Yorks Worlds Trade Centre in 1974 or the IRA drama Shadow Dancer in 2011, has made a genuine attempt to show the realities that faced Jane during her thirty year marriage to someone that was unable to do anything for himself for most of the time and the strain of this becomes gradually etched on the face of the actress. Rachel informed us that Redmayne took six months to prepare for the role and the choreographer Alex Reynolds was employed to help develop his uncanny performance. It was made difficult because the star was expected to do as many as three different timespans in just one days shooting.

 

The beginning of the end of the thirty year marriage. 

This is a good-looking film with an obvious attention to detail with Eddie Redmayne actually meeting Hawking midway through the filming who agreed to the use of the actual voice simulator that he used. As I said at the beginning of this ramble sometimes you have got to take a leap of faith and see a movie that your not sure of, sometimes your lucky as in this case, and sometimes your not.

 

Professor Stephan Hawking.

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[1] Outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Albatross.

You’ll know exactly what I mean when I describe watching a movie with a permanent grin plastered on your face? The latest film to inflict this condition was the British coming-of-age drama Albatross (2011) Niall Maccormicks debut feature film that’s set on the South Coast of England but filmed on the picturesque Isle of Man. His previous work has been in television including 2008’s award winning Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley.

A new lease of life for Beth.

Seventeen-year-old Emelia Conan Doyle gets a job as a cleaner at the Cliff House Hotel. The hotel is home to a author who has suffered writers block for twenty years and his dysfunctional family which includes young Posy, teenager Beth (Felicity Jones) and the long suffering and brittle Joa (Julia Ormond) wife and mother, ex-actress and now head cook and bottle washer at the hotel, to this ensemble our newly employed cleaning lady injects a renewed enthusiasm for life. The writer Jonathan (The Lives of Others (2006) Sebastian Koch) falls for Emelia while dispensing creative writing lessons in his private study. Beth strikes up a close friendship with Emelia persuading her to accompany her to Oxford University where Beth is to take part in the entrance interviews. While there and under the tutorage of Emelia, the naive Oxford hopeful learns that there is more to life than studying!

Oxford visit.

Reading some of the reviews you get the impression that the British critics were not convinced by film but I must differ. Although the narrative was a little lightweight I found it to be a very pleasurable and amusing 90 minutes greatly helped by the pitch perfect performance from Jessica Brown Finlay as the charismatic Emelia. I agree that the plot’s important, but even with the best-written screenplays the cinemagoer is not always as entertained?   

Can Emelia unblock Johathan?