The Theory of Everything

James Marsh’s film is a story about caregiving rather than about physics. The camera only shows Hawking’s work to the degree that Jane can see it, so the theories get discussed in kitchens and corridors and while a child is being watched, and no equation on screen ever becomes a genuine argument. Eddie Redmayne’s physical transformation was not filmed in order either; the scenes were shot out of sequence, which makes the progression of the illness as much a construction of the edit as of the performance. It departs from the record at several points that matter. Brian, the closest Cambridge friend on screen, has no real counterpart and is a composite assembled from several people. The timing of the diagnosis is moved as well: Hawking learned of his illness after he and Jane had met but before they began seeing each other, and she heard about it indirectly. His documented refusal of outside care for years is almost entirely absent. The synthesised voice heard late in the film is not an imitation. The crew tried to rebuild it, disliked the result, and Hawking granted permission to use his own device after watching the finished cut. Right for someone choosing a marriage film told from the carer’s side. Wrong for a reader who wants the memoir’s harder edges intact.