For 24 hours, Toronto is under invasion by British scientists. Specifically, Oxbridge-educated scientists from the middle of the last century who made monumental breakthroughs despite enormous personal obstacles.
On Sunday it was the turn of Eddie Redmayne, appearing as Stephen Hawking in a film based on a memoir written by the physicist's first wife, Jane. On Monday the man with the furrowed brow and killer cheekbones is the codebreaker Alan Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch – who is the only other actor to have played Hawking (in a BBC series).
The first boffin biopic out of the blocks sets the bar high. The Theory of Everything is directed with style but a stern lack of pretension by the former documentarian James Marsh, who does his best to absent himself, presumably calculating this is a story with enough substance to sustain itself without smoke and mirrors.
Even the science becomes relatively digestible. Stand by for no fewer than three mealtime scenes in which someone explains Hawking's theories using, variously, a potato on a fork, the swirl of cream in coffee and beer spilled on a pub table.
We first see Hawking as a grinning postgraduate in early 1960s Cambridge, whizzing on his boneshaker over the cobbles with a pal to a party. It's here he meets Jane (Felicity Jones), a foreign languages undergrad who shares his intellectual curiosity (and, as it happens, his movie star pout). Before long she's had Sunday roast with Stephen's parents and the pair are discussing astrophysics beneath the stars at the May Ball.
Then, aged 21, after a fall, comes Hawking's terrible diagnosis: motor neurone disease, meaning his muscles will progressively waste and he most likely has only a couple of years to live. Hawking asks if his brain will still function. Oh yes, replies the doctor – except no one will know what you're thinking.
The physical decline runs in parallel to Hawking's personal and professional successes: bestsellers and academic acclaim, getting as close as you can get to the meaning of life – as well as three children and many years of happiness with determined, devoted Jane.
The choice of source material had led some to wonder if the decks might be stacked in her favour when it came to the treatment of their separation. But this is a film of scrupulous ethics and fresh-scrubbed compassion. It's true there's something slightly predatory about the nurse (Maxine Peake) who comes between them, but by and large the film handles its emotions with the same careful consideration as its maths.
It stands or falls, of course, on its central performance. But Redmayne towers: this is an astonishing, genuinely visceral performance which bears comparison with Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. His Hawking starts askew – the glasses, maybe the shoulders a touch – and over the course of two hours contorts and buckles into a figure at once instantly familiar and fresh. This is more than just skilful impersonation – it's inhabitation. To look on as his face and body distort is to feel, yourself, discomforted, even queasy.
The film's emotional punch, however, comes from the trauma the disease wreaks on Hawking as one half of a couple. It manages that rare thing in any movie, least of all a well-upholstered biopic, and that is a realistic relationship, with grace notes, and a bedrock of respect and affection. Jones makes for a formidable opposite number; she's a consistently brilliant actor who needs a breakthrough.
Perhaps this may prove to be the movie. Though Redmayne will deservedly hoover up a great swagbag of awards, Jones shouldn't go home empty-handed. One beautifully underplayed scene between the two near the end hits with such choking force the viewer is left almost giddy.
It's a film to leave you reeling but cheered, too. It's about battling love, as well as illness. A universal story, extracted from a unique one.
