A Pinoy At The Movies: Theory Of Everything

            (The movie poster on the Seoul subway station)

A few weeks back there was the incredibly good, Interstellar, which took us all into other planets outside our solar system. 

This one, Theory of Everything, didn't send me out into outer space but into the mind of one of the most intelligent human beings ever, which in my list, includes Albert Einstein, and the inventors of the wheel, air travel and chocolate truffle cakes. Ha-ha-ha!

Stephen Hawking, one of my two favorite authors, wrote A Brief History of Time, his book that attempts to educate his fellow human beings whose IQ levels are way below his. Played by Eddie Redmayne, Hawking seemed to have breezed through his doctorate degree just like I breezed through the short quizzes of my Level 4 Spanish classes at Instituto Cervantes in Manila. Of course, no comparison. Ha-ha-ha!

Eddie Redmayne was superlatively good in this film. From the start until the second hour of the film, where Hawking had to endure a life of paralysis while trapped in a wheelchair suffering from a motor neurone disease. Redmayne's performance reminded me of Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Christy Brown in the film, My Left Foot. That performance earned Day-Lewis the first of his three best actor Oscars; he also won for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.

Two years ago, on Les Miserables, I was impressed with Redmayne's performance. But in his work for Theory of Everything, I have a feeling he will go on to win a major acting award as he had the whole film to display his English talent playing another famous English man. It seems that Academy members favor actors playing real characters. Remember Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady? Or Colin Firth playing King Edward in The King's Speech? They both won.

Theory of Everything is an autobiography of Hawking's life. He breezed through his academics as he was a genius; but he struggled when it came to his emotions and later on, on his physicality. But all this handicap didn't and until now, doesn't hinder his quest for "a single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe."

It was -6'C all over Seoul when I hurried down to the CGV Cinemas at the Yongsan Station to catch this film. Straight from work, I didn't have dinner yet. I just grabbed a tall size green tea frappuccino from Starbucks just to fill in my tummy (and to complete my 17-sticker requirement for a free 2015 Starbucks diary!). But all throughout the 123 minutes of English life and theoretical equations on the blackboard, the movie seemed to have just flashed through the screen before me and in between my sips of my green tea frappuccino. A mark of a beautifully made film.

Cambridge. English tea. English life. Lou Gehrig's disease. Wheelchairs. Cosmology and blackholes. And a lot of talented actors and dialogues. All those made this film enjoyable to watch. This might even make me re-read A Brief History of Time again.

But before I do, I'd like to recommend to you that you watch this film, too!

                 (The huge poster for the new Hobbit film now 
               showing at the cinemas. I didn't catch it. Yet.)