One That Made Me Laugh, One That Made Me Cry

James Marsh’s movie “The Theory of Everything” had me sitting in the dark weeping at the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto. It’s a visually beautiful film about the life of British physicist, Stephen Hawking, based on the book, “Traveling To Infinity: My Life With Stephen,” by his former wife Jane Hawking. I was not weeping so much from what I saw on the screen but from the empathy of having lived parts of it in my own life, and being so viscerally reminded of it. 

Stephen meets Jane when they are both young students at Cambridge, he interested in finding proof of a singularity that condenses spatial and temporal events into one unified theory of everything, and she in medieval Iberian poets. He is an atheist and she believes in God. They fall deeply in love. I am not giving away anything by telling you he develops "motor neurons disease," the official medical name of which is Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), referred to in America as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” The disease eventually leaves Hawking unable to walk, talk, or eat. But it doesn’t affect his intelligence. In fact, even today Hawking is often referred to as the smartest man in the world. But before his disease progresses to this state, he and Jane marry and have a family. 

I will leave it to our critics at Rogerebert.com, Susan Wloszczyna and Brian Tallerico to give you a full review of the movie. What I want to convey is the deep emotion this movie engendered in me despite its glossy beauty.

Eddie Redmayne does an amazing job as Stephen Hawking, morphing from the athletic science student to the physically disabled but still brilliant scientist. Felicity Jones also deserves praise for her portrayal of Jane Hawking, burning brightly in her love for Stephen and her determination to pull him out of the doldrums and help him to pursue his scientific studies.  

There was so much of this movie I could relate to: the first time Jane presents Stephen with a wheelchair; the decision she has to make in the hospital to have the doctor save his brain at all costs, as opposed to preserving his ability to speak; the sheer grit involved in staying positive and making sure their lives are as normal as possible. To see someone else going through that on the screen was of course a catharsis for me, but that wasn’t the only reason I related to the film. Cosmology was a favorite topic of conversation between me and Roger, and we were great admirers of Hawking. Quoting from his book “A Brief History of Time” when joking what the universe is comprised of, Roger loved saying “it's turtles, turtles, all the way down.” On more than one occasion in the airport Roger’s computer voice would be confused with Stephen Hawking. “Not a bad comparison,” Roger would joke.  

After such a heavy experience I needed to laugh. So I searched out Chris Rock’s new movie, “Top Five.” And laugh I did. It is not a great movie, but it is funny and entertaining, and I predict it will do well at the box office.   The movie is written and directed by Rock and contains some of his trademark raw humor. He stars as a comedian named Andre Allen who had big success in cheesy Hammy the Bear action movies, and now at 4 years sober wants to stop doing comedy and be taken seriously. His new movie is called, “Uprize,” about a Haitian revolutionary who kills loads of white people. Allen hopes the movie will become the new “Django,” but everyone wants to talk only about the next Hammy movie.