The Man Who Knew Infinity
Director: Matt Brown
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 2.0
"Indian peasant" S. Ramanujan (Dev Patel) - who has no formal education in mathematics - ends up in Cambridge (having left his wife and family back in Madras) under the tutelage of G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons) where he battles racism (he's called a "wog" and eventually beaten), homesickness and physical illness (which would claim his life at 32). As remarkable as Ramanujan's mind actually was, this is a routine and risk-free depiction of his (brief) life - he's treated as a sickly blank slate while Irons has to play the smoking, twitchy eccentric who shields him from the "elite." It's nice that Brown has the great Bertrand Russell (Jeremy Northam) as a figure in this - Russell's a personal hero of mine (even though I don't always agree with him) - although it could have used a little more of his wit as well. It might have been nice had the movie bothered going into further detail about Ramanujan's findings and their significance (proof!) ... but it treats its art-house audience like dummies who cringe at the sight of fractions.
