THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY – Review

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY is a handsome, well-acted historical drama based on the unexpected true story of an India-born, self-taught mathematical genius. In 1913, the young genius was brought to England, by a mathematics professor at  Trinity College in Cambridge, who recognized the young man’s gift despite the prejudices of the time.

Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”) plays Srinavasa Ramanujan, a poor and poorly-educated Hindu man who is obsessed with mathematics, working out ground-breaking original theorems in the dust of his local temple floor. Jeremy Irons plays mathematics professor G.H. Hardy, a flinty fellow who counts among his friends and colleagues Bertrand Russell (Jeremy Northam). The story is set against the historical backdrop of World War I, and the colonialism and cultural prejudices of the era.

Even before traveling half way around the world to the foreign culture of Great Britain, Ramanujan was already a fish-out-of-water even in his home city of Madras, a young man who cares more about numbers than people. One of the few people he connects with is his beloved new wife Janaki (Devika Bhise), who is living with his mother while her husband looks for work. Despite his lack of a degree, Ramanujan secures a job as accounting clerk in a British colonial office, after a man in the office reads Ramanujan’s notebooks and recognizes the young man’s brilliance. The job allows Ramanujan to move his new wife and widowed mother into a home with him. Meanwhile, his supervisor encourages the young clerk to write a mathematics professor in England for help to get his work published, and his British employer picks Hardy as the academic to target. It turns out to be serendipity. Hardy responds and invites him to England but leaving India means Ramanujan must defy his mother, who fears he will not return, as well as leaving his beloved wife behind.

A low-level government clerk producing brilliant mathematical/scientific discoveries sounds like another early 20th genius – the young Albert Eisenstein. Ramanujan is not a famous name but as this intriguing film suggests, except for the intervention of chance, he might have been as well known as Eisenstein or even Newton. The interaction of genius and chance are running themes in this excellent film.

Making an involving drama about mathematics is no small feat, yet THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY succeeds brilliantly, thanks to fine acting by Patel and Irons, and a strong supporting cast that includes Toby Jones and Stephen Fry, and skillful direction by Mathew Brown. The director wisely focuses on the human story, particularly the relationship between Ramanujan and Hardy, instead of burying the audience in mathematical detail. Brown crafts a tale of hard-work, genius, and cross-cultural friendship that spotlights an important but little known gifted man who overcame remarkable odds to make a contribution upon which science and technology are still drawing even today.

The film features splendid photography and gets all the period details right, but the ideas it raises is what makes it so intriguing. THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY explores, deftly, how prejudices and assumptions can cloud our ability to see brilliance in unexpected places and people, and reminds us that genius can pop up anywhere. Not surprisingly, prejudice is a topic that crops up in this early-twentieth century story but it is not the whole story. Ramanujan is not only from a colonial country but he is an Asperger’s-like character whose social difficulties make it difficult for him to explain his intuitive insights and ground-breaking ideas. He resists doing the proofs needed for publication, with a mix of self-confident arrogance and basic cluelessness about why they are needed for the ideas to be accepted. The drama is as much about the central character’s difficult personality as the cultural differences between him and his mentor Hardy, or the knee-jerk prejudice against an Indian man who lacks formal education that they both encounter. As Patel plays him, there is a mix of sweetness and otherworldliness in this young genius.

Chance is a theme that runs through THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY. But this excellent historical drama also obliquely touches on other roles for chance in the recognition of genius. The story prompts one to wonder how often a Beethoven, a Van Gogh or an Einstein was simply born in the wrong time and place, or how often such a genius died before the gift could fully expressed. Once in a while, history uncovers such unrecognized or forgotten geniuses but how many more of them leave no trace to uncover?

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY is a surprisingly engrossing film about an unknown figure that offers great acting, an intriguing true story, a thought-provoking meditation on genius and an inspiring tale of courage and friendship.

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY opens on May 13th, 2016

OVERALL RATING:  4 1/2 OUT OF 5 STARS