[Spoiler Notice: This blog entry contains spoilers about the film “The Theory of Everything.” Consider yourself warned.]

This afternoon, after work and before running some of my usual errands, I went to watch a film as I sometimes do. I expected to see a film about the triumph of love over serious illness, of loyalty between a beautiful and passionate woman and her immensely intelligent but seriously tormented husband. As the film was based on a memoir by Jane Hawking, and as I was not aware of the private life of Stephen Hawking beforehand, I rather naively thought that this film would show a triumphant loyal love like that promised by the film’s description. Unfortunately, that was not the film I saw, although it started in a way that I could identify with–an eccentric and socially awkward nerd sees a beautiful girl who listens to him and is interested in what he has to say, and they strike up a flirtatious friendship. After the notoriously lazy Hawking is found to have an incurable neuromotor disease, Jane refuses to give up on him and marries the man she loves, with whom she has children, despite his obvious health struggles, even managing to throw in a Dalek reference at one point for Dr. Who fans in the audience.

The film takes a darker turn, though, when it introduces two figures who combined end up destroying the domestic happiness of the Hawking household. First, when Jane is overwhelmed taking care of Stephen and concerned that her children are missing out on a normal childhood because of his limitations, her mother suggests that she joins the choir, where she meets a childless widower with little ambition and a lot of freetime. Naturally, there is obvious chemistry between the two, and he spends a lot of time with the family, leading to a lot of gossip about the paternity of the Hawkings’ third child. Worse, Stephen goes into a coma on a trip in France while Jane and Jonathan are camping with the two oldest kids. As a result of the scrutiny, Jonathan takes a step back and seeks to avoid causing distress to the troubled marriage, which manages to limp along for a while longer. At this point, a female nurse develops a flirtatious friendship with Stephen, bonding over Penthouse magazines, and when Stephen invites his nurse to go with him to America and doesn’t even tell his wife about it until afterward, the marriage is over even if the two remain friends.

This film adopts an approach at the end that seems disappointing. Hawking flirts in his mind with a college girl, imagining himself walking out of the wheelchair and picking up her dropped pen before saying that as long as we live, there is hope. Stephen and Jane, now divorced, meet the queen and Jane encourages Stephen to decline the knighthood as they look at their children play as the film cuts to the final text and credits. It is a deep shame that suspicion and doubt destroy a marriage, along with a lack of communication. When I went into the film, I thought that Jane might be a woman of the kind that I would want in my life. By the end of the film, she was a passionate and friendly woman but one who nevertheless had a tendency to cut and run, and that is simply not something I can tolerate in my life. No, I need someone who will be loyal and faithful, and who will not run away simply because being in my life is not easy. After all that I’ve been through, I’m worth the effort.