Backcountry is a well-acted film with a familiar premise that pits the ignorance of man and woman against nature. This time around, couple-seemingly-on-the-verge-of-implosion, Jenn (Missy Peregrym) and Alex (Jeff Roop) leave their urban comforts to explore the never-seen-on-screen Blackfoot trail, secluded somewhere in the Canadian wilderness.

Inevitably, the couple becomes lost and begins a longer-than-intended trip back to civilization, only to cross paths with a large black bear that proceeds to wreak rather gruesome havoc on a momentarily-serene scene within the couple’s tent.

Despite the been-there-done-that premise, Backcountry salvages itself with two strong performances by Peregrym and Roop. For the most part, their interactions are believable and mostly subdued. They still don’t diminish the triteness of the male hubris trope that is central to the film’s plot or our seeming inability to survive without technology – depicted in both a nearly addictive form and an ironically salvific one.

Refreshingly, Backcountry does not simply push its characters into an argument because they are lost. Granted, this happens, as the audience has to see tension before it can root for the couple against the bear, but there is a subtle dysfunction in Jenna and Alex’s relationship before the inevitable verbal blowup. Though we learn Alex’s intent in bringing Jenna to Blackfoot trail is to propose, there’s something unfortunate that he decides to take her somewhere that only he sees as beautiful. Yes, perhaps Jenna would ultimately see the beauty he sees, but her apprehension in venturing into the wilderness – despite being heave foreshadowing – suggests that he doesn’t necessarily understand the woman he intends to marry.

Similarly, Jenna reveals that the ostensible support she offers to Alex as he journeys from job to job in search of the perfect one is little more than a façade to cover the struggles in their relationship. In truth, she wonders why he “always fucks things up.” This adds to the tension that we finally experience between the two when the wave of frustration surfaces, but at least the tension doesn’t come out of nowhere. Rather, it’s kind of always there.

In a testament the director, Adam MacDonald, Backcountry is shot differently from other films in its genre, like Open Water, Frozen, or the like. In many man versus nature films, the focus is often on the ultimate isolation. Here, the focus is on suffocation. Each frame tightly grips Jenna and Alex. There are few wide shots and one of the only sweeping, expansive shots is an aerial to show just how far Alex and Jenna are from their starting point. Furthermore, Backcountry suggests that there is a domicile that is little more suffocating than a tent. The stuffiness, the cramped space, and the illusion of safety only add to the cringe-worthy creepiness emanated within the film. The thought that the most protected place from a hungry bear is a thin, nearly transparent layer of nylon is disturbing unto itself.

In the traditionally romantic style, Backcountry is a fine exploration of man’s ultimate subservience to nature, even if the inclusion of Brad (Eric Balfour) as the alpha male / anthropomorphic man-bear is a bit unnecessary and ultimately silly in a rather non-ironic sense.

Foxcatcher chronicles the tragic partnership of multi-millionaire John Du Pont (Steve Carell) and brothers Dave (Mark Ruffalo) and Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), Olympic medalist in wrestling from the 1980 and 1984 games. Recently, the real Mark Schultz has gone to Twitter and Facebook to condemn director Bennett Miller’s depiction of suggested homoeroticism between Mark and John. I’m not suggesting that this undercurrent doesn’t exist within the film – after all, wrestling in itself is homoerotic – but this trope is not the meat of the film.

Rather, the thrust of the film – at least I didn’t use it as a pun – focuses on the juxtaposition between earned and privileged. As depicted in the film, Du Pont (Steve Carell), heir to the DuPont chemical fortune is an isolated mama’s boy, confined on a vast expanse of land knows as Foxcatcher Farms. His mother, who we only see a few times, lives on the farm, but has a catalytic impact on John’s personality. He is at one friendly and free-spirited and in the next acting out in such a way that begs for his mother’s attention and recognition.

His interest in Olympic wrestling is genuine, but his mother thinks it “low.” When she appears in the gymnasium, John calls all the men in a semi-circle with a break to aid his mother’s sightline and then pretends to instruct the wrestlers. What he offers is pedestrian and unbelievable. And maybe she recognizes that he has no true wrestling skill – though he professes to be the Olympic team’s trainer and coach – or maybe she’s just indifferent and disappointed that he’s not out fox hunting.

Either interpretation is fine, but both lead to the investigation of privilege. At one point, John forces Mark to introduce him to an audience of people. As Mark rehearses, he repeats that John is an ornithologist, philatelist, and philanthropist – as well as a writer, an entrepreneur, a wrestling coach, and a trainer. Yet, he hardly seems trained in any of this as the film goes on. At one point, John also enters and “over-50” wrestling tournament, spars a bit with an equally as languid wrestler and wins the title, though the film intimates that this victor was purchased.

As the U.S. team’s coach and trainer, he hardly shows them anything, preferring to leave Mark in charge of training and then ultimately convincing Mark’s brother Dave to take on the role. Here, there is also the common theme of brotherly rivalry that runs throughout.

That aside, the privilege afforded John, one that allows him to interlope into many roles because of his capital, does not provide him with the skillset to handle these many roles, but his obvious financial advantages bunk up his perception to believe that it does.

In a way, it seems that John’s desire to coach the wrestling team is a proxy for his resentment toward his mother and the sheltered life that she created around him. Speaking to Mark, John notes that Olympic wrestling is about more than just a medal, it’s about the “virtues required to attain it.” Both Mark and Dave become a surrogate for John’s desires to attain something without having it handed to him. Ironically, he fails to do the attaining. Rather, he uses the money that he seems to reject to employee athletes that can attain the “something” that John is missing.

Throughout, the performances by Ruffalo, Tatum, and Carell carry the film to it unfortunate, tragic ending. Ruffalo is nearly unrecognizable, Tatum proves that he has emotional range, and Carrel is creepily sedate as the rather laconic and eerie John DuPont.

Hell hath no fury like  a fairy whose wings have been forcibly amputated. Veering from the well-known Disney interpretation of the Sleeping Beauty tale, Maleficent offers a justification for the titular character’s animosity toward Aurora (Elle Fanning) – and it’s not unjustified.

In the beginning of the film, we meet a young Maleficent, whose horns are only half-matured and whose wings carry her on the back of the wind. A protector of the wooded knoll, Maleficent encounters Stefan (Sharlto Copley), a young peasant who desires to one day inhabit the mountain-top castle that resides in the distance. Their attraction feels real, and perhaps this is because of the childhood innocence thus far untainted by power and greed.

But soon, Stefan enters adult-hood and disappears from Maleficent’s life. She matures and continues to protect the knoll from human invaders, and Stefan’s desire for power grows as he battles in the king’s army – soon plotting to fulfill the king’s request that Maleficient’s head be brought to his table like John the Baptist’s. While Stefan can’t bring himself to decapitate his former infatuation, he can conjure enough temerity to shear off her wings and offer them as payment for the eventual crown that will reside upon his head.

From this point forward, the film gets dark, with Maleficent cursing Stefan’s ultimate progeny, Aurora, and enveloping the knoll with blackened trees with twisted, intertwining roots and branches. Stefan’s insanity and paranoia seems to grow, his wife appears to have perished toward the end of the film, and Aurora is sent to live with three rather incompetent, yet funny, winged fairies.

Maleficent and her minion Diaval (Sam Riley) follow Aurora – initially to stalk her but eventually to protect her, and ultimately, Maleficent becomes the mysterious “true love” that will break the spell placed on Aurora.

While this interpretation is rather well done, the more interesting aspect of the film is its content. This is the second film released by Disney this year – and the third in the last two years – wherein women are the heroes of the film. More importantly, along with Frozen, this is the second film in the last two years in which the concept of true love is an organic phenomenon and not something derived from a doe-eyed glance. Both films also dispel the notion that love is guaranteed.

Frozen suggests that Anna and Kristoff might fall in love, but the film leaves us with the two kissing and getting to know each other better. Maleficent offers the same with Maleficent and Stefan. The two have fun and scamper as young adults, but there’s always something a bit parasitic about Stefan. Even though time separates their encounters, we find that theirs is not true love. We also find that Aurora and Prince Philip’s (Brenton Thwaites) relationship – if it can be called that – is very young. They are both tyros and seem to be embracing such instead of forcing the happy, neatly put together ending.

The downside of Maleficent, surprisingly – I think – is Angelina Jolie. For some reason, her performance feels stiff and unnecessarily Anglo-Saxon. I suppose that everyone has a bit of British-tinged accent in Fairy tales, but hers is rather spotty, and I begin to wonder if it’s because of the amount of green-screen usage in Maleficent. This is not to say that the effects are unbelievable. Actually they’re quite good. However, the younger generation of actors in the film, seem to have an easier time interacting on screen and seem a bit less stiff. Perhaps their scenes were filmed on a real soundstage with other actors around them. However, it’s plausible that Jolie was filmed mostly on a separate stage. Her wings and magical powers alone suggest that she was in front of a green screen the majority of the time. And this ultimately makes Maleficent’s character feel like an add-on, instead of the titular hero.

From director Ana Lily Amirpour comes A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, perhaps the first Spaghetti Western meets vampire movie mashup. Filmed in black and white and completely in Farsi, Girl takes us around Bad City, a realm of dead citizens left in ditches that are barely noticed by passersby. Those that survive are perpetually preyed upon by gangsters, drug dealers, and a lonely vampire.

Sheila Vand is the titular character with the thirst for blood. But she is discerning. Like a vigilante, she seeks out the reprobates, prodding those teetering on the edge to be “good boy[s],” lest she follow them around “until [they] die.” As with any vampiric figure, the Girl poses a question of nobility. She survives on the lives of others, but does her extermination of less savory characters inversely increase her own worthiness?

Perhaps.

Those that she devours on screen are a drug dealer and a heroin junkie. Those that she seeks to protect are a young boy; Arash, the lonely bullied, but good-hearted son of the drug dealer; and a thirty-year old prostitute. Within the latter group, the Girl tells us a bit about herself. In all appearances, she is no more than twenty. Too young when she became a vampire, she has been prohibited from experiencing love. Thus, her interest in Arash, a twenty-something man teetering between an honest life and one of criminality. As for the prostitute, the Girl sees something of a wasted life within her and tries to put her back on a more legitimate path.

However, the primary argument in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is that we often see the world in binary forms of “good” and “bad,” whereas the real composition is replete with gray area. To support this position, the film is shot in stark blacks and white, with each character exhibiting both, as if they are internally fighting their own noble and evil tendencies. The same can be said for the Girl as she’s shot on screen and her existence: she hunts those she sees as nefarious and aides those she sees as worthy.

Through her repeated use of oil derricks, Amirpour also suggests that the world we’ve created is as equally vampiric as the character that she’s created. While I don’t believe that Amirpour is railing against oil consumption or attempting to make us aware of the global energy supply, she is highlighting our rather endemically parasitic nature, and the way in which this parasitism leads to advancement – whether we’d like to admit it or not.

As The Babadook begins, we are caught in Amelia’s (Essie Davis) nightmare, tossed about helpless, surrounded by shattered glass, and the inevitable impact that’s coming. As she wakes from her tumultuous sleep, the bags under her eyes bespeak many nights of the same terror. Soon, we learn from her precocious, verbally diuretic son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) that his “dad’s in the cemetery; he got killed driving mom to hospital to have me.” Suddenly, the dream makes sense, but, as Samuel is now seven years old, we begin to understand that this nightmare has been running in perpetuity.

The Babadook is a fictional monster with broad shoulders, shear-like hands, and a top hat. Mostly seen in silhouette, the creature is incepted through words and looks – “if it’s in a world or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.”

Here, The Babadook separates itself from the gory horror genre. Instead, it relies on slow camera movement, intermittent silence, and psychological scares to thrill its audience. The most frightening part about the Babadook is that the monster can’t be eradicated. There is no technologically advanced monster vacuum procured at the end. Rather, the monster lives because the trauma lives.

Here, Samuel is red herring. In a traditional horror film, the child exists as bait for the monster or as a surrogate. But here, the Babadook seems less interested in Samuel, who becomes the de facto protector and father figure, and more interested in Amelia, whose sanity is increasingly questioned as the movie progresses.

Thus, the more frightening aspect of this film is watching Amelia slowly descend to madness, thus forcing us to acknowledge our own precarious state of self. The seven years of insomnia, coupled with the tragic death of her husband is doubly complicated by Samuel’s birthday occurring on the anniversary of the death. Her son is therefore a constant symbol of death and loss as well as something that is frighteningly “other.” He has a seemingly preternatural ability to sense evil and he is forced to take over the paternal role in the family.

As a replacement for his father, Samuel throws Amelia’s existence out of whack, constantly prohibiting him from making weapons and devices to scare away the Babadook. In one sense, this is fine parenting. Letting your child assemble a dart gun hardly seems wise; in another, she cannot lend Samuel ascend to the position of protector. If she does, then her husband will be vanquished.

And herein lies another trigger for Amelia’s trauma. It seems that her husband’s things are locked away in the basement of their home. Prohibited from going downstairs, Samuel is only familiar with the fact that his father once lived, but now is dead. By compartmentalizing the deceased parent, Amelia has given him life and effectively boxed him up for herself. She refuses to speak about the incident – even if Samuel does. Until the very end, she bars Samuel from celebrating his birthday on its actual day – thus forcing him to celebrate on a separate day with his cousin.

The Babadook is not frightening because of gallons of blood, cats jumping out from closets, or horribly disfigured killers. The Babdook is frightening because it exposes the threats of all of those things that we keep inside and refuse to leave behind, while forcing us to recognize the marriage of trauma and existence.

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s new film, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Innocence) is unrestricted, taking aim at the rash of superhero films that have been progenated by whoresome producers in the past 10 years. As the former on-screen superhero Birdman, Riggan (Michael Keaton) hears a series of names that have joined the superhero cadre and wonders, “they put him in a suit too?” The choice to cast Keaton for this lead role is a great tongue and cheek nod to the success that a superhero film can bring, but a lesson in the typecasting that can follow. Keaton was Burton’s Batman, and it’s rather hard to separate the two, despite many of the other films that Keaton has done.

In an attempt to revitalize his career and break free of the superhero pigeonholing, Riggan writes, stars in and directs his adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” For Riggan, the transition from film to stage is, on the one hand, meant to show his versatility as an artist. On the other, the struggles within the play’s production constantly tempt Riggan to ink his name for another Birdman sequel. A latex suit and wings feels tempting when he’s surrounded the dysfunctional Lesley (Naomi Watts) and Mike (Edward Norton), a dysfunctional couple who play a dysfunctional couple on stage; Sam (Emma Stone), his recently-out-of-rehab daughter; and Laura (Andrea Riseborough), his new girlfriend who is also in the play.

Here, the juxtaposition of a play within a film forces Riggan to consider fame or craft. This is not meant to say that stage actors and actresses can’t find fame or that film actors and actresses have not finely honed their craft. However, wealth comes from the cinema. Celebrity is more endemic to cinema than to stage. This, I assume, is the purpose for Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan), the film’s New York Times theater critic. Sipping martinis in a bar next to the theater, she waits to tear the play apart on opening night. Her hatred for Riggan is no secret. She sees him as another film start pretending to be an actor. In her criticism of these transitions from screen to stage, she portends the theater’s death, believing that it has become an artless house of spectacle once actors “measuring [their] worth in weekends” begin taking up residence. Tabitha’s primary point of contention is whether or not film stars are actually thespians.

Do they study and hone their craft? What are they putting into the show each and every night? While there are previews and rehearsals, there are no cuts and second or third takes once the play begins.

The super repetitive process of getting the play to opening night – you often don’t realize that the entire film you’ve been watching has just been previews and the lead up to the opening – posits that a necessary trait required in acting for the stage is insanity. Throughout Birdman, Inarittu brilliants employs a nearly two-hour tracking shot. In a sense, he shoots it as if it were a running play. Transitions between days are not broken by a curtain, but by a fixed point – say the railing of a fire escape – and time lapse photography shows the transition from day to night. The camera then pulls back and resumes the scene.

This effect gums up our understanding of time. As the camera circulates from character to character within the theater, there is no clear break in time, but the characters might change wardrobe, or we might be distracted by a random conversation before being brought back to another conversation that is apparently taking place sometime later. In a sense, this constant stream of time and the circuits within the stream make it impossible for the actors and actresses to leave the theater or the stage. It could be argued here that Inarritu is suggesting that actors and actresses don’t just leave their craft when they go home – if they go home. This is made both apparent and complicated throughout the film when Riggan believes that he truly is Birdman. In the film, it seems he was the first actor to play a big budget superhero and find success on screen. Thus, he is Birdman, the original.

However, we often see that he believes he truly IS Birdman – a man who can sprout wings and fly; a man who, apparently, has telekinetic powers. There are moments in which he thinks things (like, say a theater light falling on the head of one of his least-talented cast members) and they happen. Or, he’s able to levitate and object and move – or hurl it – across the room. We see the visual effect, but we’re never quite certain whether it’s his imagination or a reality. In effect, we are caught within the veritas of a play but the spectacle of the screen, making it difficult for us, too, to distinguish what is real and what is fiction.

Darkly comical and sardonic, The Skeleton Twins is a poignant study in loneliness. A warning to those about to watch the film: there is no resolution. Much like the Milo and Maggie (Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig), the melancholic, estranged siblings suggested by the title, we are left hanging – not in such a way that we have to ask, “What the hell?”, but in such a way that makes us realize we have no idea what’s coming next.

Neither do Milo or Maggie.

There is slight triteness to The Skeleton Twins, inasmuch as the force that brings the two back together is a suicide attempt, and the finale of the film suggests the possibility of a rebirth, but the meat of the film is comprised of genuinely earnest performances by both Hader and Wiig. Separated for ten years, the siblings are reunited, simultaneously forced to realize that their lives are better with each other – and to remember why they became estranged in the first place.

Maggie is married to Lance (Luke Wilson) a good-hearted, hard-working gentleman who’d like to have children – as he suspects that Maggie does. And it seems within this prospect, writhes Maggie’s major anxiety, whose major source is embodied in her own mother. She absent, flighty beyond belief and completely self involved.

Milo is a young gay male whose attempts at being an actor in Los Angeles are fruitless. Stereotypically, he is a waiter in a small café, but the real tragedy is that he’s scarred an emotionally unavailable.

What’s refreshing about The Skeleton Twins though, is that neither Milo nor Maggie openly pine about their respective issues. Rather, they keep them inside; they wear mostly brave faces – except when they’re drunk.

The Skeleton Twins is far from a whiny melodrama centered on finding one’s self. Instead, it investigates what it means to be lonely, even when surrounded by people.

Orgasm-tinged breathing opens the film, as the camera sets our gaze from a mountaintop over an open valley. This devolves to a visceral scene that reminds us the importance of wearing appropriately-sized boots while hiking.

Based on Cheryl Strayed’s book, Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, the new briefer titled film, Wild, recounts Strayed’s 1,100 mike hike from Mexico to Canada. The attempt itself is impressive, and her success is doubly so. Admittedly, she’s not really a hiker, and even for “real hikers,” the adventure is ripe with difficulty and treacherousness.

In a tale that pits a young, attractive blonde in the middle of the wilderness with little human contact, it’s almost expected that she’ll be chased by a bear, stuck in quick sand, hunted by a nefarious, anthropomorphized wolf, and or on her path to death, but to director Jean-Marc Vellee’s credit (Dallas Buyers Club), he avoids spinning the film into hyperbole and an other addition to the genre of torture porn. Instead, Vellee coaxes earnest performances from his cast. Witherspoon is believable as Strayed, whose battles with grief and addiction compel her to break away from all that is familiar to embark on this massive trek. And Laura Dern, as Strayed’s mother Bobbi is solid as the wife who left behind her abusive husband to re-start her life with her children.

Here, Cheryl and Bobbi are one in the same. Both had promise and higher expectations for themselves, subsequently found themselves in life-damning situations – Bobbi with her husband and Cheryl with heroin addiction – and ultimately decide to change their lives. On the trail, Cheryl reads Adrienne Rich’s understanding of Marie Curie’s life and death as “denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.” The same is true for Bobbie and Cheryl, wherein Bobbie is both the source of strength for Cheryl to ultimately persevere, but it is Bobbie’s death that provides Cheryl the excuse to delve into a number of infidelities and heroin abuse.

The connection between the mother and daughter is an ever-present part of Wild, but there is nothing more overt than the film’s look at sex is seen in various in contexts. Cheryl admits a promiscuity when she confesses to cheating on her husband Paul, “a lot of times.” Her regret is palpable when she speaks about her infidelities, but she doesn’t deny her sexuality while on the trail. One couldn’t call her lascivious, but she doesn’t refuse help from flirtatious men to gain a bit of knowledge or to get her package from a ranger station after it has closed. She also has sex with a stranger in the midst of her 1,100 mile hike. I’m not condemning her actions, but it’s fascinating that her threesome or random hookups while in the bonds of marriage make her an outcast and a screw up, whereas flirtation and promiscuity on the trail offers her a new perspective on life.

This contradiction within Wild leads to a, perhaps, even larger examination of film: plot, while often an interesting device to move from A through Z, isn’t always as intriguing as moments of experience that comprise a glimpse of someone’s life. Like a well-produced biopic that pares away the overdone depictions of trite humbleness or hardships of beginnings to the ultimate descent to rock bottom before ascending to a utopic inner peace, Wild suggests that Cheryl is happiest leading the life that she has been, but can find a more acceptable catharsis within it beyond the bounds of what might be seen as “expected” or “normal.”

Anyone who watched the then-WWF’s professional wrestling as a child in the 80’s and 70’s will undoubtedly be familiar with the camel clutch, the pre-Hogan all-American Bob Backlund, and of course, Hulk Hogan himself. Most likely one would also recognize Khosrow Vaziri’s, or as he’s better known, the Iron Sheik.

Igal Hecht’s documentary, The Sheik, chronicles Vaziri’s life from his upbringing in Iran, through his position as the Shah of Iran’s bodyguard, his escape from Iran, his position as a coach on the United States Olympic Team, and ultimately his role as a coach with the University of Minnesota. More than just a heel in the realm of sports entertainment, and the impetus for the rise of Hulkamania – he was the ultimate villain that allowed Hogan’s popularity to flourish – Vaziri was a real wrestler. And a real Iranian.

Like other films have done (most notably Beyond the Mat), this one delves into the seedier side of professional wrestling, particularly the fates of those wrestlers that helped the industry to explode in the 1980’s. Addiction to pain pills and other narcotics is commonplace, are the references to sleepless nights and years that require 300+ days on the road to make a living and the penultimate relegation to some arbitrary, virtual-backyard, independent circuit of wrestling.

However, the most fascinating facet of The Sheik is how it illustrates the World Wrestling Federation cum World Wrestling Entertainment as global-filtration system for its spectators.

The rise of the Iron Sheik came from the WWF’s effort to “play off the core Islamaphobia” incited in this country by the hostages that were taken at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979. Such a rise was one surrounded by vitriolic hated spewed from the spectators that crammed into each arena. One needs to remember that, up until the 1990’s, most teenage fans – and some adults – “still believed [wrestling] was real.” The squared circle was a place for feuds and grudges. It represented a sanctioned violence through which to work out world affairs.

While entertaining, wrestling varied from any sort of dramatized depiction of ethnicities, races, and cultures one finds on television. The TV itself creates a divide between reality and fiction. It provides a natural separation between the viewer and the content. However, being part of an audience that cheers and boos un unison as wrestlers approach the stage fashions a group-constructed reality that can’t be matched – or at least couldn’t at that time – on television.

And in this, Vaziri embodies the line between the reality and fiction of which wrestling entertainment is comprised. On the one hand, athletic ability is – most often – needed to put on a show for the masses. On the other, the outcomes of each match are pre-determined, as are the storylines. However, aiding the fiction of the Iron Sheik’s nefariousness is his true Iranian ethnicity. His accent is authentic. His look is authentic. His Farsi is authentic. He becomes the “epitome of what a bad guy should be.”

By all accounts, the Iron Sheik was a revolutionary force in wrestling entertainment. The hatred aimed toward him in the early eighties grew the sport and opened the door for Hulk Hogan to become Hulk Hogan. Ironically, a low point in Vaziri’s life also become an eventual high point in the wrestling industry.

Cruising around late one night with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Vaziri and Duggan get pulled over. The first problem is an eventual DWI charge. The second is that, as a heel, Iron Sheik should not be seen consorting with a baby face wrestler, or, a good guy. The questions that arose the next day in a number of papers was whether professional wrestling was all a ruse

In the long run, this worked out perfectly for the then-WWF who were able to get more ridiculous with storylines while embracing that people knew they were coming to see a soap opera, not necessarily real life played out on stage.

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones’s powerfully understated performances drive James Marsh’s new film, The Theory of Everything, a film based on the relationship between world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones). As Marsh did with the documentary Man on Wire, he plays this film slowly. There are few montages throughout, which seem to be a staple to show the evolution of personality in a standard biopic. Instead, we see one shortly after Hawking is diagnosed with ALS, a motor neuron disease, that is predicted to kill him in no more than two years, that fast-forwards his and Jane’s wedding and the birth of their first child. And we see another, this time in reverse, at the end of the film that posits whether or not Hawking has found an equation into which everything fits.

The slow play of the narrative truly allows the characters to develop, which prevents this film from becoming a showcase in how awful Hawking’s affliction is. Instead, in the beginning of the film, we see subtle ticks that will ultimately become his crippling condition. Within a half hour, Hawking is primarily relegated to a chair and has limited mobility. In turn, the rapidness that Marsh employs allows the focus of the settle on the relationship between Hawking and Jane, not the evolution of his disease. There are certainly painful moments to witness, as we see Hawking paralleled with his infant children, and Jane tasked to clean and clean up after each one. The humiliation he feels is palatable as he stares at her with apologetic eyes, unable to bring himself to verbally acknowledge that his body is treasonous to himself.

However, the remainder of the film centers on Jane as the lynchpin to Hawking’s success as a physicist. She is his caregiver, the mother of his children, and the one that allows him to flourish. Of course, there she has moments of temptation, ones that Hawking recognizes; he has moments of jealousy, ones that Jane understands, and they both have moments open to castigation.

However, The Theory of Everything, treats both of them with a kind gaze, choosing to criticize neither one of them. Throughout their divorce, feelings are briefly hurt, but the process takes place off screen, and a title card at the end of the film notes that they “remain close friends.” While this initially felt sappy and saccharine, there’s a beauty in the way that the film attempts to posit its own theory of everything: interactions are about survival.

While this feels a bit trite, and this film – at the very end – does resort to the all-too-familiar biopic ethos that the human spirit will prevail against all odds, there’s a sweetness in the thoughts that our constant evolution won’t end in absolute failure.