The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014)

The problem with biographical films, when judged against original drama, will always be that we simply know what will happen. This can be offset to a degree by being about a figure whose story is shrouded in some mystery or controversy, but when, as here, the focus is on someone who we effectively know everything about, there isn't really anywhere for the drama to go. Besides this, The Theory of Everything also has to grapple with several other challenges: firstly, making theoretical physics engaging for the lay viewer, and secondly having a protagonist who can effectively not move or emote for half of the film.
No solution is really found to the first hurdle except for the customary oversimplification, with advanced maths reduced to lots of visual metaphors of black holes, invocations of time itself as some kind of omnipresent/non-existent god and a soundtrack that hardly takes a breather in cajoling us towards the desired sentiment. So it's as well that the second and more essential element is handled a great deal better. Eddie Redmayne as Hawking does his humanly best with the role, bringing both an impishness and a stubborn defiance to the character that remain constant from the precocity of his student days through his long years of physical decline, to the extent of reaching the biography actors' hallowed land where the portrayal starts to supersede the real-life person in our minds.

6/10