The Man Who Knew Infinity
“Genius is never understood in its own time” — Bill Watterson
He was a man who knew infinity. This is his story. The story of a genius, a genius hidden until the times changed. A genius who never got his due, a genius who was discovered for a reason, a genius who was hated for his brilliance. A genius indeed, a man, who knew infinity.
Based on a biographical book by Robert Kanigel, this British drama is about a real life Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematician who after growing up poor in Madras, India, earns admittance to the prestigious Cambridge University. A story set during the times of World War 1, Srinivasa was an avant-garde in mathematical theories. Supported by his professor, G.H.Hardy, he did the never-done-before in the world of Mathematics. His story, has now been brought to the fore in a moving movie experience for the audiences.
A beautiful mind is reduced to simplified dramatic equations in “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” an easily digestible fish-out-of-water biopic of Srinavasa Ramanujan, the India-born mathematical star whose teaching under the English academic G.H. Hardy gave rise to some of the field’s more remarkable 20th-century discoveries. As tends to be the case when filmmakers turn their attentions to matters of the mind, the prevailing narratives here are geared almost entirely toward the emotions — and so, despite some duly stimulating dialog between lead players Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons , this sophomore feature from writer-director Matthew Brown emerges an overly dutiful account of physical hardship, cultural prejudice and inevitable tragedy that, in form and spirit, never channels the inventiveness and creativity of its subject’s work.
The film artily shows the journey of a self-taught but unemployed boy and virtually living rough in Madras, reaching out, via India-based civil engineer Sir Francis Spring to Cambridge theorist GH Hardy, who initially suspected a prank. Of course he would be! It is not often that you received letters from an unknown person across continents who claims that he could give meaning to negative values of the gamma function.
Even though it is one of the new movies, the film has managed to make its mark. Being one of the critically acclaimed ones in the drama movies genre, has only just added to its repute. With a rhythmically & a dramatically slow-moving cycle of sudden misfortunes which strike the protagonist, the film takes a sorry turn which non-surprisingly builds up the engagement.
Dev Patel scores at essaying the role of Srinivasa, as he manages to build moments after moments of hard-won recognition for the character. The film ends leaving the audiences with a sobering acknowledgement of how the great mathematician was taken away from the world a tad too soon. If only this soaring intellectual had lived, just imagine how many more of his accomplishments might have found a mention in the closing credits: all we can do is wonder!
