The Theory of Everything is a biographical drama film of 2014, based on life of the ingenious theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. It has been from the 2007 memoir authored by Hawking’s former wife of long thirty years, Jane Hawking, titled ‘Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.’
The book and this film are not only based on the journey of Stephen into becoming the prime cosmologist of 20th century, but also discusses the personal relationship of the couple in the backdrop of turmoil due to motor neuron disease suffered by him.
The film directed by James Marsh and written by Anthony McCarten has certain dialogues and sequences which can hit you deep to evoke a sense of wonder with a slight sting of melancholy. A few of such insightful lines are noted in this piece.
“Cosmologist is the religion for intellectual atheists.”
“Seek, then. No learning from starry men, who follow with the optic glass, the whirling ways of stars that pass.”
“In the beginning was, the Heaven and the Earth. And the earth was without form, and darkness, was upon the face of the deep.”
“A star, more than three times the size of Sun, ought to end his life how? With a collapse?”
“To prove with a single equation. That time has a beginning. Wouldn’t that be nice professor?
“The one simple, elegant equation to explain everything.”
“A star vanishes into a black hole, then the black hole itself vanishes. From nothing to nothing.
I have just shown you that our friend has proven that time, indeed, has a beginning.
Not only that, how the universe was born and how it will end.”
“Mr. Hawking, you have said you do not believe in God.
Do you have a philosophy of life that helps you?”
“It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among hundred billion galaxies.
But, ever since the dawn of civilization, people have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world.
There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe. And ‘what can be more special that there is no boundary’. And there should be no boundary to human endeavor.”
“We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”
“While there is life, there is hope.”
The film is a must watch for cinephiles as it is a beautiful piece looking into the intelligence and complexities of becoming passionate towards science and cosmos, in the circumstance of dreadful struggles, including the consequent impact on the people related to the scientist.