Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1991
A Brief History of Time (film)
Buy A Brief History of Time (film) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'A Brief History of Time' is a 1991 biographical documentary film about the physicist Stephen Hawking, directed by Errol Morris. The title derives from Hawking's bestselling 1988 book 'A Brief History of Time', but, whereas the book is solely an explanation of cosmology, the film is, additionally, a biography of Hawking's life, featuring interviews with some of his family members and colleagues. The music is by frequent Morris collaborator Philip Glass.
Production
This film project originated with executive producer Gordon Freedman, who brought the project to Anglia Television as a co-producer. After acquiring the property, Freedman met with director Steven Spielberg for advice on how to make the project into an important documentary film. Spielberg suggested Errol Morris as director. Freedman's production company partnered with Anglia Television and Tokyo Broadcasting. David Hickman, of Anglia, became the film's producer.
Morris only had a few days of access to film and interview Hawking. Because of Hawking's ALS, a disease that progressively affects nerve cells within the spine and brain, Morris filmed various static shots of Hawking, his wheelchair, and the tools he used to communicate, such as his battery-powered computer-based communication system with an electronic voicebox (which was sponsored and provided by Intel Corporation), to later edit together for the video component of Hawking's interview segments in the film.
Although Hawking had an aversion to featuring his personal life in the film, Morris saw 'A Brief History of Time' as being as much a biography as a science text, and much of his directing and editing work was dedicated to finding ways to depict ideas from theoretical physics and cosmology and then connect those ideas with details from the life of Hawking. He employed stylized interview sequences, graphic illustrations, and hypnotic music written by Philip Glass.
Instead of Morris traveling around and filming the various interview subjects in their native surroundings, all of the interviews for this film were shot on specially built sets on a sound stage in England.
Music
The soundtrack for 'A Brief History of Time' was composed by Philip Glass.
Soundtrack
Reception
'A Brief History of Time' received largely positive reviews. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 93% rating based on 15 reviews. On Metacritic, the film has a 78 out of 100 rating based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Availability
The film was released on VHS in the early 1990s, but remained unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray until The Criterion Collection issued a release on April 15, 2014.
References
Buy A Brief History of Time (film) now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1991