When
the kids start back at school, I have a not-strictly-adhered-to tradition of
going to the cinema on my own for a little me-time.
And
so it was today, after a much-needed haircut, I went with my $11 online ticket
to see The Theory of Everything.
The
story is based on the book Travelling to
Infinity: My Life with Stephen written by Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane
Wilde Hawking. The two leads, Eddie
Redmayne and Felicity Jones, are superb in this heartbreaking romance. The story follows the couple’s meeting,
romance, Hawking’s diagnosis with motor neurone disease, his subsequent physical
decline, marriage, children, Hawking’s success as a brilliant theoretical
physicist and the difficult decisions that Stephen avoided, but inevitably had
to be made (ultimately by Jane).
I
was moved to tears many times during the film and I was still quite emotional
on the drive home. I’m not sure
why. The film has a happy ending:
Stephen, who was given two years to live from diagnosis, is now 72; both Jane
and Stephen remarried but have remained good friends. Perhaps it’s the fact that love couldn’t
conquer all. It didn’t matter though because, as Stephen says in the movie, ‘Where
there is life, there is hope.’
The
best bit of The Theory of Everything (spoiler alert): Stephen’s last computer
generated words in the film when he and Jane are watching their children play
in the grounds of Buckingham Palace: ‘Look what we made.’
