Author Archives: David Giles

The Theory of Everything Review by David Evan Giles

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The Theory of Everything is, quite simply, brilliant.  In the same way that director Steven Soderbergh lifted Erin Brockovich from being a legal procedural TV movie to its position as a major motion picture, Oscar-winning documentary director James Marsh has taken what could have been an awkward mix of impenetrable science and a terrible disease and made a deeply human story that is moving, inspiring and so totally engaging that audiences often sit right through the end credits as they take in what they have just seen.

It is the humanity, the frailty, the warmth, the humour, the kindness and – to use a very old fashioned word for an unfashionable quality – the decency of the story, played by a faultless cast with such little apparent effort or strain, that makes The Theory of Everything the most memorable film in a rich field at this year’s Oscars.

Eddie Redmayne’s transformation from a slightly awkward ‘natural scientist’ (the traditional expression at Cambridge University for a ‘geek’) to the towering brain caught in an unco-operative body is little short of miraculous.  This is not a star turn, where the dribbling is designed to win prizes for being ‘confronting’.  Redmayne plays the man and not the disease.  The character of Stephen Hawking stays vigorously alive as more and more of his body fails and what Jane, his wife played so delicately by Oscar-nominated Felicity Jones, fell in love with is still there in his eyes though his voice is gone, replaced by the American accent in a box that most of us have heard.  His family and friends are brave, supportive and accepting.  As played by Redmayne, Stephen Hawking inspires love because of the man he is, alive and laughing, inside the body he no longer controls.

A recent article in a national newspaper carried a cynical headline, asking that no more films be made about white, male, British geniuses.  It was a painful bit of smartypantsness, because the two movies that could fall into that category this year are both brilliant pieces of filmmaking – the other film is The Imitation Game, for which Benedict Cummerbatch is also deservedly Oscar-nominated. Between them, these two films are likely to do more to wash away prejudice against homosexuality and the disabled than a thousand pages of legislation ever could.  Their heroes are both great men, great minds and in great pain.  They are treated by the writers and directors with enormous respect and played faultlessly by young actors reaching the top of their game.   In the English-speaking world, the film culture has lately been dominated by endless sequels, remakes, stories based on comic books, gross-out comedies and cynical violence.  The Theory of Everything proves that complex stories about real people can still be told and the audience is rewarded by the feeling that the human journey can still be an ennobling experience, in which we are not limited by our bodies, but only by the barriers we set up in our minds.  Don’t miss this film.

 

 

Making a mess with The Maids – Sydney Theatre Company by David Evan Giles

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Because of the superstar presence of Cate Blanchett, the season of Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’ has been a sell-out here in Sydney. The radiant Miss B received a standing ovation from her most enthusiastic fans and there was great energy and total commitment in her performance. But, with a weary intake of breath, one has to wonder how this production ever made its way to the stage in its current state of chaos.

The new translation was handled by Blanchett’s husband, Andrew Upton, who is also the artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, and Benedict Andrews, the director of the production. Perhaps those dual roles for both men provide a clue as to how on earth this mish-mash ever made it through rehearsals without someone pulling it together. An artistic director with some objectivity and distance would have surely told the assembled cast and crew that Isabelle Huppert, playing opposite Cate Blanchett, was literally incomprehensible as she gabbles her way through speech after speech in her heavily accented English. Let us be clear – it is not merely that Huppert’s accent is very strong but it seems almost as if she has learnt the script phonetically, as there is so little connection between what she says and what she does. The incoherence of her performance is mystifying. Whenever a fine actor like Huppert is lost, then the responsibility must come back to rest with the director. Andrews has failed to help her shape her performance into anything that makes sense, so no matter what Blanchett and the impressive newcomer, Elizabeth Debicki, try in an attempt to bring the play together, they are fighting a losing battle. Their response to the manic bursts of energy from Huppert was to inject more and more energy themselves and they have to be commended for their efforts but ultimately the audience was left a little dazed and confused by a display of what appeared to be mass hysteria.

The use of television cameras to highlight various areas of the play and throw them up on a giant screen upstage of the action is not new. There are moments, especially when Cate Blanchett is putting on make-up at her mistress’s dressing table, where the presence of a camera is effective but for the most part, the camerawork presents poorly framed images that are more distracting than enlightening or engaging. Again, the director might have more usefully focussed his attention on the interplay between the characters than on a gimmick.

The play itself was very largely lost in the confusion. The new translation was sprinkled with so many expletives that they quickly lost their sting. Genet’s rage against class and patronage could perhaps have found resonance with an audience had it not been lost in the maelstrom. The play’s text seethes with menace but where a skillful director might have held his cast back, letting the tension build and the danger increase, Andrews has started the play with all the knobs turned up to ten – and the only place to go from ten is an unsubtle blast of, well, eleven.

A tour has been planned but as much as I would dearly love to see the Sydney Theatre Company thrive and prosper, if it is coming to a town near you, there are many other ways you could spend an evening, perhaps by renting some DVDs to see the excellent cast (Debicki is in ‘The Great Gatsby’) at their best. Overall, this production took some of the best talent in the world and made of it a great bowl of ‘zuppa inglese’. The responsibility lies with the director.