The Theory of Everything

By Michael Muir

“I thought he was me,” says Stephen Hawking about Eddie Redmayne’s performance, a role which has already scored him several prestigious awards as Best Actor and sees him nominated for a dozen others – including the Oscar.

It’s the highlight of a film that could be described as ‘A Country Practice meets cosmology’; a standard biopic about a truly outstanding individual.

But very enjoyable all the same: it is by turns moving and funny, with much hilarity coming from Hawking’s own waggish humour.

The Professor says he was ‘honoured and humbled’ by the film but must have been disappointed that the focus is on a life he’s always avoided talking about rather than his groundbreaking work.

Perhaps though his attitude to the eternal versus the transitory was summed-up on social media when he said, “It would be an empty universe indeed without the people that I love.” (MMu)

3.5/5 stars