Astounding Human Stories!

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant cosmologist has intrigued the human world with groundbreaking theories on black holes and origin of the universe. What makes his life story extremely riveting is the pulsating life force inside a body severely affected by ALS for decades, churning out astronomical details and a family life with children and grandchildren. I was completely bowled over when I read his engagingly written biography by Kristine Larsen (a physicist and astronomer herself) a few years back. Larsen presents a candid and insightful portrait of Hawking’s personal and professional life in her book.  And then this week, I watched the film The Theory About Everything at the ongoing International Film Festival at INOX, Panjim. It is directed by James Marsh with spectacularly convincing performance by Eddie Redmayne  as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones in the role of his wife and love, Jane Hawking.  

The film is inspired by the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Hawking. The writer comes across as an utterly committed,  passionate and determined homemaker, a rock behind the life and success of Hawking, the great physicist. A Ph.D. in Spanish Poetry, she writes candidly and sensitively about her 25 years of married life with Stephen Hawking. She evocatively paints the paradoxical picture of her ex- husband’s scientific breakthroughs, his rise to stardom and deterioration of his motor muscular activity affecting his physical abilities. The interwoven threads of a warm family life of fun and activity with three children, against the great odds of a chronically disabled father, add poignancy to the dramatic detailing. The lucid ramifications of the intricate black hole theory, and the ongoing synthesis of theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, provide clarity to a lay reader.

When books are adapted into films, the visual gives a concrete form to the print word but sometimes catapults it into a nameless abyss to the despair of a reader. Diehard fans of books may want to murder me, but I would say that particularly in this case, the movie does justice to the book. It is indeed astonishing to view their life together along with Hawking’s contribution to humanity. The camera is the storyteller as it stays and strays from Jane’s facial expressions and lived experience. Yet the man himself – Stephen’s mind mechanisms remain mysterious. Speaking through a voice box attached to a computer, bound helplessly to a wheelchair, he holds eminent personalities glued to their chairs with his enunciations on cosmology and quantum physics. The progressive deterioration of the body is contrasted with a spark in his eyes and wit and humor in his speech and thought. Its as if an incandescent effervescence holds him together. The dichotomy of fame and disease pervades each frame, a GREAT LESSON IN THE GREAT POWER OF LIFE FORCE WHICH HAS SUPERSEDED AND DEFIED ALL LOGIC AND SCIENCE. It makes one believe in a divine presence, though Hawking never puts it into so many clear words of faith or GOD.

If you missed seeing the movie, read the books , they are easily accessible through Flipkart or Amazon.

Ram Dass, Fierce Grace was another film at IFFI based on books by Richard Alpert. A Professor of psychology at Harvard, he is known for his experiments with LSD-25 in the 1960s  alongwith Timothy Leary and their book The Psychedelic Experience. The viewer is charmed by his sojourn to India, and complete absorption into the Eastern philosophy of karma and salvation, and his relationship with the Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, servant of God. His study with Baba helped him evolve on a spiritual path. He surmises, “From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you. I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people ... to me, that's what the emerging game is all about." What enthralled him most was not the fact that Baba had immense love in his heart for humanity – but in Baba’s presence, he seemed to be enveloped in love and felt love for everyone around him.  

Heir to a wealthy Jewish family estate, he accommodated people from all walks of life on his father’s sprawling golf lawns, swaying to the strains of Hare-Rama Hare Krishna. In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. All of 83 now, he feels blessed and purged of every doubt, fear and belief.  He said, "Now, I’m in my 80s ... Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I’m getting closer to the end. ... Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me."

After a stroke in the last decade, which he perceived as a grace of God, he concluded that the hidden human qualities that had emerged in its aftermath in him would not have otherwise.  As such, each human soul has to go on, on a path of inclusiveness, accepting each experience with humble faith. He preaches on webcasts and founded the SEVA and Hanuman foundations of service to the poor and needy.

The viewer is astounded, watching his life’s trajectory - born just after the jazz age, into money and great academic excellence, indulging in drugs and psychedelic experiments to karmic Hindu philosophy, a long road to map. Been there, done that – and then to morph into a spiritual life, it is indeed intriguing to read and watch. What do we take from here?

Still a couple of days here at IFFI – we are all assimilating, reflecting, engaging ourselves.....

Kudos to World Cinema intertwined with Literature at our doorstep! Enjoy!