Based on Jane Hawking’s memoir* “Traveling to Infinity*: My Life With Stephen,” this film is not mainly about Hawking’s most famous scientific work. Instead, filmmaker James Marsh has focused on marriage, specifically how Hawking’s disease and Jane’s support get the couple through the most difficult times.

    “The Theory of Everything” begins in the early 1960s, when Hawking — played by Eddie Redmayne — is a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, and when he meets Jane (Felicity Jones), who’s studying medieval* Spanish poetry.

    Hawking takes a serious fall one day and can’t get up. Soon after that, he’s diagnosed* with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis* and told he has two years to live. After Hawking becomes depressed*, Jane arrives to help. The two begin to date* despite the fact that she’s a devout* Christian (Church of England) and he’s an outspoken atheist*. When Stephen asks Jane out on a Sunday morning and she tells him she’s usually busy then, he immediately understands. “Oh,” he answers knowingly. “Him.”

    As he grows more and more dependent on Jane, Stephen’s demands begin to seem increasingly bad-tempered and cruel. Redmayne is understandably getting most of the praise for a painfully demanding* physical performance that is also very expressive. But Jones too does a great job for her less showy but tricky* portrayal of a woman who, far from being a traditional self-sacrificing* helpmate, is trying to balance between her religion and marriage, with her own career and physical and spiritual needs.

    At its best, the film tells its central love story not as the stuff of soap-opera melodrama*, but as a relationship between imperfect adults, troubled with many familiar things, flaws* and setbacks*.

    It’s an exceptional* film, not because of its protagonists’ impressive success, but because it honors their struggle. But audiences should keep in mind: The film is different from Jane’s book in some facts.

    (SD-Agencies)