Summary: Interesting Look
Comment: A very fine and intriguing documentary from Errol Morris about the life and work of physicist/celebrity Stephen Hawking, who revolutionized the way we think about the universe in his monumental book of the same name. The film is really divided into two stories, the life of Hawking as he struggles to overcome his paralysis, and the brilliant work he achieved in spite of his physical limitations. One gets the impression that had Hawking never became ill, he wouldn't have been as compelled to carry out the kind rigorous intellectual work that he of course did carry out, and (he himself notes that he was quite bored with life prior to his paralysis). Morris does a fine job with the material; the first half hour of the film suffers from a dry PBS feel, but the aesthetic and intellectual intensity takes off from there, the film never digresses into a mere sob story. Morris nearly always keeps the material more intellectually intriguing than it is uplifting and sentimental.
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Summary: Biography and Science
Comment: Many documentaries focus on either the scientific ideas of a person, trying to explain them to an audience wherein most people can understand what is being talked about.
Other documentaries are about people who against the odds do something great that everyone will remember them by.
This documentary combines both in a very interesting mix. Through interviews with his mother and sister we get a good insight into his life as a teenager and part of college. From his fellow students we learn more about him as a student at Oxford and Cambridge (with not the best grades btw). From colleagues we learn what a brilliant mind he was.
Hawking is the only person to really talk about both sides, about how his disease (ALS) developed and also how he came up with his brilliant ideas, also fully admitting where he was wrong.
The maker of this movie has made a very good mix of a biography of Stephen Hawking but inbetween also a good explenation of time, black holes and such that even someone with no feeling for math and physics can understand.
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Summary: ...
Comment: A Brief History of Time is an uncomfortable combination of autobiography and a bibliography of some (generally Hawking dominated) concepts in cosmology. While it does go into more depth (and is slightly more entertaining) than Stephen Hawking's Universe does when it covers these topics, the movie is greatly distracted by anecdotes about his life. Some of these offer an entertaining glimpse into his life and personality, some into how certain of his and other scientests' ideas were come across, but others are pointless and annoying, and on the whole they distract from the science, which is really the most interesting topic the film could cover.
It does deserve some props for being, visually, slightly superior to Universe. The Phillip Glass soundtrack also provides a nice ambience throughout, but it often seems inappropriate, and would be much more enjoyable to hear on its own. A Brief History of Time is something to watch if you're interested in learning some details of Stephen Hawking's life, an introduction to his work, or were dissatisfied with Universe, but, even if it lacks visually, I feel Universe was much more inspiring during its better moments.
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Summary: Enjoyable and thought provoking
Comment: This delightful documentary gives a keen look at the intimate parts of Stephen Hawking's remarkable life. Interviews of friends, family members, and colleagues are artfully weaved with pictures of Hawking, computer graphic illustrations, and the commentary of Hawking himself. Along with the overview of Hawking's life we get fascinating bits of physics and philosophy that challenges his mind and everyone else's. If you have an interest in popular physics, then this would be a worthy purchase.
This isn't a spectacular documentary, it stays true to the accepted style that is both entertaining and at times predictable and plodding. It is humorous though, the opening scene involves a chicken and some stars, and much of Hawking's narration is filled with wry wit.
The First portion of the film is almost solely devoted to the early years of Professor Hawking's life. He wasn't good at school we learn surprisingly. He was never as attentive as he later wished he should have been. However, his genius was enough, and he got his degrees. However, it was being diagnosed with ALS that forced him to focus on what really interested him, the aftermath of which has been the cosmologist we know today.
Further into the movie there is a discussion of black holes, which is the subject of Hawking's first successes in physics. This segment alone I consider worth the price of admission, however an even stronger segment comes next; a discussion of the origin and outcome of the universe in which we live. It's all concluded by some whimsical observations by Hawking. This isn't a classic, but for those that don't have the time to jump into many works of cosmology and physics and philosophy, this provides entertainment and a fair dose of where physics stands today.
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Summary: Interesting developments in science
Comment: This short film is about a monumental cosmologist attempting to delve into the unknown in order to know it. It poses the question as to whether there is a God behind the universe or a self-contained boundless system running blindly by its own physical laws (or perhaps there is a God but one who is impersonal to the universe). Today there are two theories about the expansion of the universe. Some believe that it will continue to expand forever while others think it will slow down, contract, and collapse with the cycle continuing infinitely. Hawkings clearly thinks the latter is more plausible. This probably explains his agnostic stance on creationism, while many theologians would naturally be more inclined to reject the theory of a collapsing and expanding universe because it does seem to do away with the idea of a "beginning" and "end." As an ignoramus in the field of physics and cosmology, I found this film to be a good compliment to his book (which is a read somewhat difficult for a person without a background in physics). Hawking's idealism is vibrant as he sounds hopeful that scientists are close to developing a unified theory of the universe that will be explicable not only to philosophers and scientists, but to the average person as well. This films only flaw is that it doesn't have captions telling us who is being interviewed and what their relation is to Stephen, but that's only a minor one at most.