Coming to PBS tonight, Wednesday, January 29: HAWKING
Stephen Finnigan’s portrait of the famed cosmologist and theoretical physicist made its debut at SXSW last year. It went on to screen at Edinburgh, CPH:DOX, Seattle, and Cambridge, among others. A shorter, broadcast version now makes its debut on PBS stations nationwide.
Though confined bodily to a wheelchair due to ALS, and able to speak only via a voice-synthesizer, Hawking for decades has been the most recognizable and popular scientist in the world. Finnigan trades on that celebrity, taking a more personal approach rather than foregrounding the thinker’s scientific discoveries in any great depth. Narrated by the University of Cambridge professor himself, the film traces Hawking’s early life, education, pursuit of science, diagnosis, and married life, and how he eventually wrote the bestselling popular science book, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, which established him within the public’s consciousness, paving the way for his iconic status as one of the world’s greatest scientific geniuses. The approach taken may sideline the more heady thinking he’s done to expand our understanding of the universe, but it does make for an accessible, and often engaging, portrait of an uncommon mind who refused to let the failings of his body limit his potential.
what (not) to doc 