First off, the new biopic of Stephen Hawking, \u201cThe Theory of Everything\u201d is a pretty good movie, but not great. I enjoyed it but I have a pretty high tolerance for disability schmaltz. I dislike overcomer stories but don\u2019t gag when I see them. I won\u2019t go see movies that degrade and us and treat our lives like an atrocity. One of the crip movie I wouldn\u2019t go see was \u201cMillion Dollar Baby.\u201d Clint Eastwood is too good a director and Hilary Swank too good an actor for me to see what they did with the repellent suicide theme. So, I went to see \u201cThe Theory of Everything\u201d in my mad dash to see the end of year Oscar contenders. It\u2019s about his relationship with his first wife, not radical theories of the universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I liked the movie. It didn\u2019t hit me like \u201cComing Home,\u201d \u201cMy Left Foot,\u201d or \u201cThe Sessions.\u201d They reordered my world and thoughts. What I look for in a movie depiction of us is an \u201cinsiders\u201d perspective. Does the everyday disability experience shown on the screen ring true? For instance, when John Voight in \u201cComing Home\u201d transferred from his wheelchair to the top of some concrete steps he turned his hand to cushion his ischia to avoid a pressure sore. It was a small gesture I didn\u2019t notice until my second or third viewing, but it rang true. (Even though I liked Voight\u2019s portrayal of Ron Kovic, there is no excuse for TV and the movies to hire so few disabled people and make us invisible as characters.) So, consider the source material for this movie. It\u2019s Hawking\u2019s wife\u2019s memoir. She, like so many of our able-bodied spouses, has a pretty realistic perspective on the whole crip thing. The movie carried a ring of truth for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sure someone in the movie must have described ALS as \u201cit\u2019s like horror of drowning.\u201d But I\u2019ve heard the inaccurate phrase so many times I didn\u2019t notice. I thought the camera had a rather neutral gaze of Hawking and his disability. I noticed the scenes showing him bumping himself up and down the staircase in his house. It wasn\u2019t presented like the triumph of Christy Brown\/Daniel Day Lewis writing for the first time. I might have it wrong\u2014I\u2019ve got a pretty high tolerance for sentimentality\u2014but it showed an ordinary \u201cthis is how I get around in an inaccessible house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the whole it didn\u2019t feel schmaltzy, although they\u2019re sure as hell going to play up the teary-eyed, gooey aspects of the movie in their marketing. Go see it. Let\u2019s talk about it. I\u2019m happy to be schooled if I\u2019m completely off the mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First off, the new biopic of Stephen Hawking, \u201cThe Theory of Everything\u201d is a pretty good movie, but not great. I enjoyed it but I have a pretty high tolerance for disability schmaltz. I dislike overcomer stories but don\u2019t gag when I see them. I won\u2019t go see movies that degrade and us and treat […]<\/p>\n