Some people think that there are only four seasons in the year, and those people are right. But for Hollywood’s brightest stars, biggest producers and most revered directors, January 11th marked the first day of the fifth season- awards season- with the 72nd Annual Golden Globe Awards taking place that night. The Globes are always a slightly odd affair, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a body of questionable authority, selecting the year’s best performers, directors and suchlike via a voting process that makes very little sense.
However, what perhaps did make sense was their choice of Best Actor in A Motion Picture: Drama (or, more cogently, best actor in a drama). Eddie Redmayne has long been Britain’s favourite old-Etonian and it was gratifying to see his sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking recognised by industry giants across the pond. Though Eddie may have the face of a ten year old boy, in this film, The Theory of Everything, he had an unpretentious and subtle screen presence that made him unquestionably deserving of the accolade. Following Hawking’s life from his student days at Cambridge, through his diagnosis with motor neurone disease and up to the present day, the world famous professor’s marriage, relationships, good humour and unwavering resilience are all showcased by a stellar cast and competent direction.
What is notably absent is any science. In fact, it became difficult to remember, through my weeping at the Hawkings’ failing relationship, that the man in the wheelchair was ever a scientist at all. Perhaps this is to the film’s credit- they were trying to show the human face of one of the world’s most celebrated scientists, not to deliver a lecture on Stephen’s Black Hole Theory (which, we are helpfully advised by one of his university supervisors, is “genuis”). The Theory of Everything was intended to be an emotional experience, not an intellectual one. But why couldn’t it have been both?
Also nominated, in the same category as Redmayne, was Benedict Cumberbatch, a person who’s face is now almost offensively ubiquitous in the worlds of cinema, television and theatre. His film, The Imitation Game, focussed on another of Britain’s greatest ever scientists (and philosophers), Alan Turing, who was responsible for deciphering the enigma code that would allow Britain to tap German military messages- a development that would considerably bolster the Allied war effort. Cumberbatch brought his trademark Sherlockian energy to the role, and the unremarkable film provided a well overdue tribute to Turing, who was driven to suicide by the British judiciary system’s sterilisation programme for gay men.
Again, however, for a film entirely centred around the scientific discovery of a masterful mathematician, there was a distinct lack of any kind of a high level (or any level) explanation of what the team at Bletchley Park were actually doing. Though it was sufficiently engaging, perhaps, for an audience to get a small insight into the private details of Alan Turing’s life- the reliability of which have been called heavily into question- one comes away from The Imitation Game none the wiser as to what this great man contributed to the worlds of Science, Mathematics and Philosophy. It seems a shame that a biopic, marketing itself as significant due to its attempt to expose the life of a wronged British hero, should make itself so lacklustre when it came to the meaty centre of Turing’s work.
What both of these films seem to point to is a refusal by the mainstream film industry to engage with complex scientific or philosophical ideas. Perhaps this is obvious. Audiences, on a large scale at least, don’t want some dense, talk-heavy movie-come-lecture when they could see a light, 90 minute action-adventure film with Robert Downey Junior. What is more upsetting is that these two films don’t represent the big budget blockbusters one associates with philistinism. The Theory of Everything had a budget of $15 million, minuscule relative to Marvel’s bi-annual releases, and The Imitation Game only slightly more than this. These are low budget, low risk releases that dodge any kind of intellectual responsibility in favour of bland domestic background, for almost no reason. It’s not even as if the theories they discuss are wholly inaccessible- Hawking’s Brief History of Time was a bestseller and Turing’s paper on artificial intelligence once featured on some A-Level syllabuses.
Add this to Hollywood’s persistent portrayal of scientists as autistic loners- Cumberbatch’s Turing a prime example, though there is no real-life evidence to suggest such a severe social handicap- and you get a movie industry acutely hostile to ideas. By trying to alienate the public from the worlds of science and philosophy, film does itself a disservice.
Leo Reich
ThinkStudioLab 