Real-life stories don’t get much more improbable, inspirational, and death-defying than that of French high-wire artist Philppe Petit, who on August 7, 1974 strung a cable (illegally, with the help of accomplices) between the two towers of the then-unfinished World Trade Center and danced for 45 minutes among the clouds for onlookers over 100 stories below. James Marsh’s 2008 documentary Man On Wire beautifully recounts the feat, which took an inordinate amount of preparation (training, trespassing, reconnaissance, recruiting) to pull off. Petit and his team’s accomplishment is the stuff of legend, and Marsh’s film is one of my very favorites.

A narrative version of the tale was inevitable, and it now arrives in the form of Robert Zemeckis‘ The Walk, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the uncontrollably charismatic Petit. The movie has its merits: the final 30 minutes, in which we see Gordon-Levitt’s Petit preen and twirl in the sky as aggravated police officers try to snatch him from either end of the cable, is an exhilarating piece of filmmaking that you won’t find in Marsh’s documentary and must be watched in a theater, in 3-D. It’s a high note to end on, but the road to get there is so unremarkable and stale that it makes it difficult to exalt the movie as a whole.

The most wonderful thing about Man On Wire was Petit, who told his own story not just with his words, but with his whole body. Zemeckis and co-writer Christopher Browne chose to grab for that same magic by having Gordon-Levitt narrate the film, addressing the audience directly, from atop the Statue of Liberty. They find mixed success: the symbolism of the fantastical New York City image has a nice poetry to it (the statue’s history isn’t insignificant here), but Gordon-Levitt doesn’t come close enough to capturing the vigor and wild ambition of the real-life Petit. To be fair, I’m not sure any actor could.

Most of Gordon-Levitt’s work has been good-to-excellent, but this is one role he just doesn’t seem to fit into completely. His attempt at a French accent is valiant but shoddy, and while he’s certainly energetic and wide-eyed, he doesn’t exude the same raw passion of his real-life counterpart. It’s a good performance and serves the story well, but he’s capable of much, much more.

In flashbacks inspired by the greatest hits of the French New Wave, we find Petit wowing small crowds as a Parisienne street performer. A magic trick involving a sizeable jawbreaker sends him to the dentist’s office, where his life work begins: he sees a picture of the under-construction World Trade Center and in an instant devotes his life to them. He’s got a lover, Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), and some friends who are willing to help him on his quest, but he seeks additional guidance from a master wire-walker, played by Ben Kingsley.

The movie’s most unbelievable elements—the eponymous walk, the heist-like operation of infiltrating the buildings, Petit’s zany personality—are all true to life. The story is that extraordinary. But Zemeckis’ approach, while inspired, actually dulls the spectacle of the lead-up to the final act. Visually, he views the world through Petit’s child-like eyes, depicting France in a heightened, nostalgic state. Once he gets to New York City, the impossibility of Petit’s dream dawns on him and the movie goes gray in a hurry. It’s a poetic device, but there are flaws in execution. In France, everything feels too Hollywood-y and fluffy, and in New York City, things get a little too drab and depressing. The balance in tone feels off, and a few tweaks in calibration may have evened things out and made for a smoother transition.

If you buy your movie ticket for The Walk, make sure you shell out the extra dough for those infernal 3-D glasses. In this case, they make the movie. The grand finale is absolutely terrifying, especially with the added depth of the 3-D effect. When Gordon-Levitt takes his first step onto that cable hung thousands of feet in the air and the camera points straight down at the tiny streets and buildings below, it’s an incredible feeling. It’s not as touching a moment as you’ll find in Man On Wire or Petit’s written account of the stunt, To Reach the Clouds, but you can’t deny the view.

Famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is an extraordinary man with monumental achievements, advancing our understanding of how the universe works while simultaneously battling a disease that left him nearly paralyzed and unable to speak. It’s a tragedy to us all that one of the most brilliant minds of our time lost the ability to communicate his thoughts with traditional methods due to Lou Gherig’s disease. But the story that most people don’t hear about is how he fell deeply in love with a fellow student at Cambridge, his first wife Jane Hawking, and how her encouragement and care allowed him to become one of the most revered minds of his field despite his physical obstacles. The Theory of Everything is an adaptation of Jane’s memoir “Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen”, which recalls how the two met and the journey they faced early in their lives.

The Theory of Everything dabbles but doesn’t spend too much time on Hawking’s academic success or how he completely changed quantum mechanics as we know it. It’s frustrating not to be invited into the scientific side of this great man’s mind, but the film makes it clear this isn’t it’s focus. The true core of the film is a love story. A young Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) can’t seem to take his eyes off a dashing girl at a party. This lovely young woman, named Jane (Felicity Jones), returns his glances and before long falls head over heels for this ambitious man. A man determined to face the mind-numbing challenge of finding a unified equation that explains everything in the universe.

The film shows early signs that Stephen’s physical abilities are on the decline, the slightest of shadows of the tragedy that lies ahead. One day while walking on campus Stephen collapses to the ground and is knocked unconscious. Doctors tell him that he has a motor-neuron disease and that he has two years left to live. Stephen’s outlook is bleak, but Jane refuses to give up even as he faces the knowledge that even if his time isn’t as limited as the doctor’s suggest, the eventuality that he will lose control of his body and voice is impending. The two of them decide to marry in the midst of this news, and as the symptoms grow ever clearer, they start a family together while Jane’s duties get increasingly more difficult as caretaker.

There’s no denying that Eddie Redmayne puts on an absolute brilliant performance in the physically demanding role which requires an entirely different and difficult communication portrayal and very limited mobility.  It’s such a transformation that Redmayne is almost unrecognizable by the end. Any early Oscar buzz surrounding Redmayne is well deserved. Felicity Jones does a commendable job of being a fearless leader and an overworked mother, though, by no fault of her own, is rather overshadowed by Redmayne’s dazzling work.

The Theory of Everything is more than just a love story, it’s an uplifting story of ambition and hope. Sure, there are conventional storytelling and textbook biopic clichés, but damned if they’re not arranged in a spectacular way, all highlighting one of the best performances seen all year, with visuals that perfectly depict every very real struggle and joy.

James Marsh, who is best known for his documentaries (Man on Wire, Project Nim), is the perfect candidate to handle the difficult task of chronicling the crowning achievements and struggles of Professor Hawking in just two hours. The Theory of Everything received collective cheers, thunderous laughs, and in its final moments, the drop of a pin would be the loudest sound heard. I’m fairly sure no one left the theater with dry eyes.

This review was originally published on 9/9/14

Get a glimpse inside the mind of a brilliant man, at the woman who loved him, and the body that let him down. Director James Marsh (Oscar-winner for the documentary Man on Wire) chronicles the fascinating life of theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, bringing the story back to Hawking’s time as an able-bodied young student at the University of Cambridge. Despite being diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 years old and being given a life expectancy of 2 years from that point, Hawking to this day delivers out highly influential findings on matters of spacetime and black holes.

Starring as the famed scientist is Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn, Les Miserables), whose physical transformation looks remarkable from the trailer alone. He stars alongside Felicity Jones (Like Crazy, a potential upcoming Black Cat spinoff from The Amazing Spider-Man 2) who plays Hawking’s first wife Jane Wilde. In real life, the couple divorced in 1995 (Hawking re-married later that year only to get divorced once again in 2006) but it’s unclear if The Theory of Everything will dive that far into Hawking’s present. Both performers have been regarded as potential Oscar nominees for their roles in this film.

The Theory of Everything will also star Emily Watson, David Thewlis and Charlie Cox. Check out the new trailer, released just today, below:

Movie Still from The Theory of Everything