Anthropoid: Grim, fact-based war drama

Anthropoid (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Terrible title, taut thriller.

And historical authenticity doesn’t necessarily justify the choice. Nor does historical authenticity conceal another issue.

Having parachuted into Czechoslovakia only the night before, Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan,
left) and Josef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) steal a truck in order to reach Prague, where they are to
link up with resistance fighters

To cite another recent example ... despite the care with which 2000’s The Perfect Storm was assembled, I couldn’t overcome the core paradox:

Sebastian Junger’s book — and, thus, William D. Wittliff’s screenplay — were based on an actual event that left no survivors. Ergo, everything we watched was no more than an educated presumption of what actually happened: a narrative conceit that can’t help pulling us out of the story at every significant juncture.

This is never a problem with dramatic fiction, which allows us to simply go with the flow; we accept the saga on its own merits. But no matter how persuasively George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg delivered their dialogue — no matter how heroically they behaved — it was impossible to accept things at face value. Were the men in question really that brave? Actually that selfless?

Similar questions emerge during the course of Anthropoid, director Sean Ellis’ often gripping account of a World War II incident that forever changed the fate of Czechoslovakia, and quite likely altered the direction of the entire war. Ellis and co-writer Anthony Frewin have developed their script from what is known about “Operation Anthropoid,” and while the clandestine mission’s preparation and outcome are the stuff of recorded history, much of this storyline can’t be any better than speculation.

Whether that’s vexing enough to be an issue, will be up to the individual viewer. It’s easy to imagine that things may have gone down this way, and that might be sufficient. Ellis certainly draws persuasive performances from most of his cast — with one unfortunate exception — and there’s no denying the suspenseful nobility inherent in WWII resistance fighters who risked everything to thwart Nazi advances.

The film begins in December 1941, three years after the Allies’ notorious “Munich Agreement”: the act of appeasement that passively allowed Hitler to take over Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired. Two soldiers from the London-based Czechoslovakian army-in-exile — Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan) and Josef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) — parachute back into their occupied homeland, and carefully make their way to the few individuals who remain in the underground resistance.

The Theory of Everything: A beautiful mind

The Theory of Everything (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for dramatic intensity and mild suggestive material
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.5.14

It’s necessary, up front, to recognize that this film is adapted from Jane Wilde Hawking’s 1999 memoir, Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen (extensively updated and re-published in 2008, as Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen).

During Cambridge's annual May Dance, Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) can't quite get into the
spirit of the event itself — for openers, he refuses to dance! — but his goofy charm
nonetheless makes an increasingly strong impact on Jane (Felicity Jones).

We therefore cannot be surprised by the saintly hue that Felicity Jones brings to her portrayal of Jane: devoted, compassionate and (particularly) patient beyond comprehension. To be sure, selfless caregivers certainly exist in real life: quiet heroes who rarely receive the admiration they so richly deserve. And there’s no doubt that Jane Hawking must’ve had a very hard life, during her early years with a husband succumbing to motor neuron disease (MND, which is related to ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

But no displays of impatience or hostility, no raging against the universe, no signs of crumbling on Jane’s part? Even if we acknowledge traditional British reserve, that’s a bit hard to swallow here.

Hard, perhaps, but not impossible ... thanks to James Marsh’s thoughtful, sensitive direction, and the incandescent performances by Jones and most particularly Eddie Redmayne. The latter looks, moves and sounds so much like Stephen Hawking, that at times it’s hard not to believe it’s actually him on the screen.

Most crucially, Redmayne captures Hawking’s goofy grin, sparkling eyes and irrepressible, Puckish sense of humor. After the MND robs the man of his limbs — and, eventually, even his ability to speak — Redmayne nonetheless continues to convey a wealth of emotion with faint head movements, raised eyebrows, a twitch of that famous smile, and his darting, ever-inquisitive eyes that miss nothing.

We’ve not seen an actor so thoroughly inhabit a physically challenged role since Mathieu Amalric’s portrayal of Jean-Dominique Bauby, in 2007’s equally fine The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s life changed in an instant, though, whereas Hawking — and his friends, colleagues and family — endured the heartbreak of his slow, debilitating slide into utter helplessness.

But we begin in happier times. It’s 1963, where Stephen is a cosmology student at Cambridge University: the mischievous, easily distracted member of a doctoral team being supervised by famed British physicist Dennis W. Sciama (David Thewlis, in a nicely understated performance). Stephen’s apparent disconnection from real-world requirements is a source of constant amusement to roommate and best friend Brian (Harry Lloyd), who probably has to remind his buddy to eat and sleep on a regular basis.