Brief History of Time [VHS]

Brief History of Time [VHS]
by Errol Morris

Brief History of Time [VHS]
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Product details

Actor: Basil King (II), Isobel Hawking, Janet Humphrey, Mary Hawking, Stephen Hawking
Director: Errol Morris
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 84 minutes
Release Date: 1993-11-10
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount

VHS Movie Reviews of Brief History of Time [VHS]

Movie Review: An inspiring and educational story
Summary: 5 Stars

An interesting story of the technical side of astrophysics combined Stephen Hawkings' personal story. You can tell that his mind powers his body rather than vice versa as most of the rest of the human race. I find him admirable and inspiring in the face of extreme adversity.

Movie Review: Interesting Look
Summary: 3 Stars

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.

Movie Review: Biography and Science
Summary: 3 Stars

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.

Movie Review: Enjoyable and thought provoking
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

Movie Review: Interesting developments in science
Summary: 4 Stars

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.
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Summary of Brief History of Time [VHS]

Documentarian Errol Morris has a knack for finding the fascinating quirks of his subjects, and this brings Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time to sparkling life. Through interviews with family and colleagues of the brilliant theoretical physicist, as well as Hawking's own synthesized readings and reminiscences, we learn of his early life, his struggle with the degenerative disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), and his wide-ranging contributions to our knowledge of time, black holes, and the origin of the universe. The science is never downplayed; between Hawking's prose and Morris's visual wizardry, important concepts such as entropy and singularities jump from the screen in memorable vignettes. (Hawking believes a truly universal theory of physics will be understood by "scientists, philosophers, and just ordinary people.") Philip Glass's music, subdued and minimal, balances the alternately somber and hilarious moods of the film. The viewer is left with a sense of awe at the joyous spirit of a man trapped in the world of the mind, occasionally letting the rest of us in on his discoveries. --Rob Lightner

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