Occam's Razor

Suddenly science is cool in the movies, at least if you don’t dwell too much on the science part. Witness two movies out now: The Theory of Everything about the life of physicist Stephen Hawking and The Imitation Game about the life of Alan Turning, the founder of modern computer science. We’ll see the latter movie tomorrow, but my wife and I did see The Imitation Game last week, so here’s a review.

To start with, this was a daunting film not so much to make but to market. No one except physicists really care about physics and the nature of reality or, for that matter, people like Stephen Hawking who became crippled early in his career with a progressive neurological disease. Recognizing this the director decided to give short shrift to Hawking’s accomplishments in physics and instead concentrated on his relationship with his wife Jane (played by Felicity Jones). This is a compelling story but it is still hard to watch Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) move quickly from active but nerdy PhD student to crippled scientist. While I knew of Hawking’s notoriety and have read two of his books including his best known, A Brief History of Time, I never knew that he was married and even had many children with his wife Jane, all after he was severely hobbled by his disease.

This is where the film tightly focuses. What draws the literary student Jane Wilde and Stephen Hawking together seems hard to fathom, aside from the fact that they both attend Cambridge University. Jane is a die-hard Christian (Church of England) and Stephen is an atheist. Jane likes to sing in the church choir and Stephen likes to play chess. Jane likes to dance and Stephen cannot, and this is before his disease progressed. Jane is beautiful and Stephen is asymmetrical, ungainly, socially awkward and wears seriously ugly oversized glasses that accentuate his obvious nerdishness.

Much more puzzling is why Jane would want to marry Stephen, particularly when his disease manifests itself. Jane though is full of either grace or stupidity, because she plunges ahead anyhow, doing almost all the work. She cares for Stephen’s many personal needs, manages the household and then becomes the mother to a number of their children. His disease, which typically kills the recipient in about two years, doesn’t kill Stephen, but it does worsen. And over time technology helps Stephen cope with the disease, giving him an artificial voice and an electric wheelchair.

Jane’s seeming martyrdom does have its price: overwhelming work, stress and no sense of identity beyond being his wife, caretaker and mother of his children. Eventually she carves out a little time for herself by rejoining the church choir. There she meets the new choir director Jonathan (Charlie Cox). Jonathan recently lost his own wife so he and Jane quickly become close, too close in the eyes of Jane’s mother, who suspects their last child is not actually Stephen’s. Jonathan though is a genuinely nice man and integrates himself seamlessly into their household, with Stephen’s tacit consent. Stephen seems to understand that he cannot provide the companionship that Jonathan can so this unusual arrangement starts to become the family’s new normal, although it raises many eyebrows both in and out of Cambridge.

By itself though this plot is not terribly compelling. Fortunately it has great acting, mostly by Jones and Redmayne to sustain your interest. We get insights into Stephen and his courage confronting the disease, but in reality this film is more an ode to and study of Jane than it is about Stephen. But even with overwhelming tenacity and perseverance Jane cannot help but feel somewhat the victim in the relationship, although it was a role she took on willingly. It’s not surprisingly that while she avoids a physical relationship with Jonathan for a long time, they become emotionally entangled and that causes more distance between Jane and Stephen.

As his disease progresses, Stephen needs the help of a full time nurse. Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake) becomes more than his nurse, but also his confidant and lover, leading Jane and Stephen to eventually divorce and for Stephen and Elaine to marry. And, oh yeah, despite his disabilities Hawking manages to write his book, lecture and make new advances in theoretical physics, something that will not surprise you if you know anything about his life. Hawking is still alive at age 72 but his marriage to Elaine ended in 2006.

So don’t expect to learn much about a unified theory of physics in this movie, which is just as well since we likely wouldn’t understand it anyhow, but do expect to feel moved by the story of Stephen and Jane’s life together and how Stephen somehow managed to live a rich life in spite of the odds against him. Despite all the great acting, this is a fringe film. It hasn’t done great in theaters because it is a topic that won’t interest most people. However, if you are brave enough to inhabit Steve and Jane’s world for two hours, you will probably find it a film worth watching.

3.1 out of four stars.

[xrr rating=3.1/4]