A.O. Scott was rather critical about James Marsh’s film “The Theory of Everything, a biopic: about Stephen Hawking:

‘Yes, “The Theory of Everything” has a different emphasis. But like so many cinematic lives of the famous, it loses track of the source of its subject’s fame. Its Stephen Hawking is a man who endured a terrible affliction and married a heroically patient woman and also accomplished something remarkable enough to put him on the cover of magazines and earn a medal from the queen. That something, though, remains beyond the audience’s grasp, which means that in a fundamental sense, everything has been left out.’

Read the article here.

David Denby in The New Yorker was more interested in the love life of Hawking.

Read Denby's article here.

That’s understandable, because James Marsh is very much interested in the secret charms of the genius. That it’s hard to move beyond the clichés of a genius, in a movie for wider audience at least, is understandable, after all we want our heroes to be recognizable. And it must be said that “The Theory of Everything” is a genuinely uplifting movie – my father would have loved it, it’s the least nihilistic movie I’ve seen in a year or so. Also the movie made me want to read “A Brief History of Time” (yes, I haven’t read it) as much as it made me curious to read the memoirs of Hawking’s ex-wife ““Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.”

And Denby is right: “Eddie Redmayne’s performance is astonishing.”

Enough reasons to appreciate “The Theory of Everything” – even though the work of the genius is kept secret.