The Theory of Everything is a good film. Not a great film, but by the essential criteria that:

1. Mel didn’t fall asleep
2. I didn’t get bored
3. I never looked at my watch
4. my phone didn’t start vibrating

it must therefore be considered worthy entertainment. Which it undoubtedly was. And we understand that it is ‘her’ story, taken from ‘her’ book. Mrs Hawking. The first Mrs Hawking. Played with gorgeousness beyond the call of duty by Felicity Jones.

Many years ago I read ‘a brief history of time’; Hawking’s dumbed down explanation of the workings of the entire universe for mass consumption. Sadly it didn’t quite go ‘dumb’ enough for me, but in fact its a great book, written with wit and charm and with amazingly complex concepts explained in such a way that at the time of reading, the ‘man on the street’ can actually grasp them and almost understand them. Though not necessarily be able to explain them to others afterwards. The ‘answers’ only remain in the mind for the duration of the reading, grasped fleetingly, then lost as the book closes. Lots of sciencey books are like that. The good ones really.

Yet in the movie I felt the essence of Stephen Hawking was lost a little in the translation.

He learned about black holes. Dead stars collapsing under their own immense gravitational pull until the atomic particles are crushed into the spaces that normally they whizz round in. Leaving a single point that weighs the same as a star (pretty heavy) and therefore has the same gravitational pull, but exists in a single point; a black hole. Hmmmmmm. And then in a ‘eureka’ moment, according to the movie, whilst watching his cream swirl round in his coffee (they used cream in 1964, which is why their life expectancy was only 62) he devised a theory.

That the universe is expanding. We all know that. You can just look out the window and see for yourself. So if you ‘run the clock backwards’ and contract the universe, where would it end? Or, in fact, where did it start? Ahhhh, thought Hawking, in his electronic mind-voice, all the matter would collect together, the stuff from every planet, every star, all in one lump. Then what? Keep running backwards and he decided that this matter would then keep compacting, like the dead star, and eventually all collapse into its own black-hole-ish point. Which he called a ‘singularity’. Others call ‘God’. And at that singularity, best of all, there was no time. Time doesn’t start until you run the clock the right way, forwards, from that point. Which he called ‘the Big Bang’. Ohhhh, yeah, one of them.

And in the movie they kind’a left it there. What a great mind to come up with such an ‘out there’ concept; brilliant; give him a professorship and buy him a new wheelchair.

But what Hawking did, almost unmentioned in the film, was prove his ‘big bang’ mathematically. Now I realise that’s just the easy bit, the leg work…

No, actually its not. He could barely use his legs. He didn’t even have an iphone, probably not a calculator, just a pencil. Because that’s what theoretical physicists like Hawking, and Einstein do, they do the sums. They don’t work in labs, they don’t spend hours analysing moondust, they do da maffs.

And I’m not suggesting that watching a man agonising for 5 years over serious number crunching would enhance the film’s Oscar potential, but some reference would have been nice.

I now calculate I’m probably late for work. Depending on when you start ‘time’ from.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx