Hawking (2004)

 

*Disclaimer: While I make a nod in this review to the discomfort of an ablebodied actor playing a character with a disability, I don’t say it forcefully enough. I have a bad habit of going easier on actors I like when they make problematic choices, and as great as Benedict Cumberbatch is, this wasn’t really an appropriate role for him.*

 

Films about someone with a disability can be dicey, especially if they’re about real people and especially if they star able-bodied actors.  The plots can grow overly maudlin, and the performances risk self-indulgence.  For the most part, though, Hawking avoids these pitfalls.

 

This British TV film follows Stephen Hawking’s graduate work at Cambridge, from just before his diagnosis of motor neuron disease to just after his revelatory thesis.  I’ll cop to not knowing much about Hawking – rather embarrassingly, I hadn’t even known he was British – but the film is an interesting and engaging story of a man eager to leave his mark before his time runs out.

 

Stephen’s disease is felt throughout the film, of course; at just 21, about to start grad school, he’s told he may have only two years left to live.  The knowledge sometimes defeats him, sometimes drives him, but it’s never far from his mind.  As he contemplates his mortality and endures losing control of his body, his chief respite is knowing that his brain will remain unharmed. 

 

This is the window into Stephen.  He’s a young man with a degenerative disease, yes, but he’s also a brilliant student who sees what others don’t.  He can be shy, dejected, self-impressed, desperate, afraid, raging, arrogant, and elated.  His curious mind yearns for answers, glittering flashes of insight.  He’ll cheerfully spend an entire night on an equation, use the theory of relativity as a pickup line, or scribble in chalk on the pavement when his ideas flow too quickly to reach a blackboard.  There are times when the camera lingers a bit too tragically on Stephen’s clumsy fingers or his shuffling feet, but Hawking is always the story of a man, not an illness.

 

Maybe this is an odd note but, given the film’s frequent references to the theory of relativity, I kept expecting a metaphoric line about how Stephen was trying to go (i.e., work) incredibly fast in the hopes of slowing down time (the progression of his illness.)  I was genuinely surprised that we never got it.  I don’t know if it’s a brilliant parallel the screenwriter missed or a cheesy comparison he wisely avoided, but I thought I’d mention it all the same.  For better or worse, it’s probably what I would have done.

 

Benedict Cumberbatch is stellar in this early performance.  He really sells Stephen’s intellect, anguish, and fervor; his expressions are map to Stephen’s mind.  Though it’s a different sort of performance, the physicality he uses for Stephen’s failing body reminds me of his Creature in Frankenstein.  I’m not sure the film would do so well without his earnest, unflinching portrayal.

 

I’m showing my ignorance again, but the film’s debate between the Big Bang and Steady-State Theories interests me.  Fascinating that believers in Steady-State (the theory of the time, that the universe has Always Been) dismissed the Big Bang as fanciful because a universal beginning left room for a Creator.  I had no idea that the Big Bang Theory was ever deemed too religious!

 

Warnings

 

Some drinking, a few sexual references, and thematic elements.