Tale of mathematics genius adds up to pleasant viewing
The Man Who Knew Infinity Where: Cineplex Odeon Victoria Starring: Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Devika Bhise, Stephen Fry Directed by: Matthew Brown Parental advisory: PG Rating: Three stars out of four
“Just like Mozart could hear a symphony in his head, you dance with numbers up to infinity,” says Professor Hardy (Jeremy Irons), admiringly, to his protege Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), a self-taught mathematics genius.
It’s 1913, at Trinity College in Cambridge University, and Ramanujan, an impoverished accounting clerk, has left his wife (newcomer Devika Bhise), his job and his culture behind in India, in the hopes of convincing the academic establishment to accept and publish his theories.
The Man Who Knew Infinity is one of those true stories that almost seems made-up.
Ramanujan’s abilities seem like those of a superhero (is there an X-Man who specializes in math?), and his personal story almost unbearably poignant.
Or perhaps it’s just the way that director Matthew Brown’s film tells it.
Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) invests his whip-smart character with boyish charm and gentle vulnerability, Irons makes the most of his role as moviedom’s umpteenth eccentric British professor and Brown sprinkles it all with picturesque snowflakes, wartime shadows and elegantly handwritten pages of math formulae.
It’s predictable — throughout the film, I kept thinking that I’d seen it before — and a bit sentimental, yet thoroughly pleasant.
Like all good biopics, it leaves you wanting to know more about its subject and about the mysterious way that math geniuses think.
Mathematical theories, Ramanujan tells his wife, are “like a painting, but with colours you cannot see.”