The Theory of Everything: The Movie

Genre: Drama
Directed By:James Marsh
Written By:Anthony McCarten
In Theaters:Nov 7, 2014 Limited
Box Office:$2.8M
Runtime:2 hr. 3 min

This movie is very well made, and even though it has a dreamy quality to it, captures the realities of being in a difficult marriage due to prolonged health issues. It is a story of Jane and Stephen Hawking and their marriage. When we think of Stephen Hawking, we normally think of his intellectual brilliance and his research on the theory of the black holes. We never get to venture into his living room (and bedroom) to see how such a person lived. Here's a movie that gives you that glimpse.

It's a hard place to be, and the movie has captured that difficulty and the humanness in the face of that difficulty with a lot of grace. You can see both Jane's and Stephen's sides in the story without having to take anyone's side. And moreover, it makes you look at marital problems with a broadness and depth than you perhaps did before. It shows how a life, as hard as it might have been, can be looked at from a place of having lived so deeply with a broad range of emotions. It's not always bleak, nor is it always joyous.

I came out of the movie theater thinking - it's not fair to judge lives. It surpasses the quality of being judged because it cannot be measured. How can something immeasurable be judged? How one lives, what their meanings and reasons are, is so abstract  - that our capacity to measure breaks down. It can only be felt and experienced fully (or how much ever is in one's capacity through one's own lens). Our realities are so subjectively different - that any form of measurement will be a failure of understanding - and moreover, a failure at being a true witness to what is.