''The Oxford Murders'' is a 2008 British-French-Spanish drama film directed by
Ălex de la Iglesia
Alejandro "Ălex" de la Iglesia Mendoza (born 4 December 1965) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former comic book artist.
De la Iglesia's films combine grotesque and very dark elements such as death and murder: most of his ...
. This
thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
is adapted from the 2003
novel of the same name by
Argentine
Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...
mathematician and writer
Guillermo MartĂnez. The film stars
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28, 1981) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of Frodo Baggins in the ''Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy (2001â2003) and '' The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'' (2012).
Wood ...
,
John Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 â 25 January 2017) was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in t ...
,
Leonor Watling
Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling (born 28 July 1975) is a Spanish film actress and singer.
Early life
Leonor Ceballos Watling was born on 28 July 1975 in Madrid, to a Spanish father from Province of CĂĄdiz, CĂĄdiz and an English mother, the ...
and
Julie Cox
Julie Cox is an English actress. She played Princess Irulan in the Sci Fi Channel's 2000 miniseries ''Frank Herbert's Dune'' and its 2003 sequel, ''Frank Herbert's Children of Dune''. She also played The Childlike Empress in ''The Neverending S ...
.
Plot
![CastRoom VictoriaAndAlbertMuseum](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/CastRoom_VictoriaAndAlbertMuseum.jpg)
In 1993, Martin (
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28, 1981) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of Frodo Baggins in the ''Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy (2001â2003) and '' The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'' (2012).
Wood ...
), a US student at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = ÂŁ6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = ÂŁ2.145 billion (2019â20)
, chancellor ...
, wants Arthur Seldom (
John Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 â 25 January 2017) was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in t ...
) as his
thesis supervisor
A supervisor, or lead, (also known as foreman, boss, overseer, facilitator, monitor, area coordinator, line-manager or sometimes gaffer) is the job title of a lower-level management position that is primarily based on authority over workers or ...
. He idolises Seldom and has learned all about him. He takes accommodation in Oxford at the house of Mrs. Eagleton (
Anna Massey
Anna Raymond Massey (11 August 19373 July 2011) was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel ''Hotel du Lac'', a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, ha ...
), an old friend of Seldom. Also in the house is her daughter, Beth (
Julie Cox
Julie Cox is an English actress. She played Princess Irulan in the Sci Fi Channel's 2000 miniseries ''Frank Herbert's Dune'' and its 2003 sequel, ''Frank Herbert's Children of Dune''. She also played The Childlike Empress in ''The Neverending S ...
), who is her full-time caregiver â which she resents bitterly â and a musician by occupation.
In a public lecture, Seldom quotes
Wittgenstein's ''
Tractatus'' to deny the possibility of absolute truth. Hoping to impress his idol, Martin disputes this, asserting his faith in the absolute truth of mathematics: "I believe in the number
pi". Seldom humiliates him, ridiculing his arguments and making him look foolish in front of the audience. Disillusioned, Martin decides to abandon his studies and goes to his office to collect his belongings. There, he encounters his office-mate, a bitter mathematician Podorov (
Burn Gorman
Burn Hugh Winchester Gorman (born 1 September 1974) is an English actor and musician. He is known for his roles as Owen Harper in the BBC series ''Torchwood'' (2006â2008), Phillip Stryver in ''The Dark Knight Rises'' (2012), Karl Tanner in the ...
), who also failed to become a student of Seldom's.
Martin then returns to his residence, where he finds Seldom arriving to visit Mrs. Eagleton. The two men enter the house together and find Martin's landlady murdered. Seldom tells the police that he had received a note with his friend's address marked as "the first of a series". As Seldom is an authority on logical series, he argues that a serial killer is using murder as a way to challenge his intelligence. According to Seldom, "The only perfect crime that exists is not the one that remains unsolved, but the one which is solved with the wrong culprit."
Martin and Seldom discuss how easily the murder of the old lady might have been overlooked, particularly as she already suffered from terminal cancer. Martin suggests that the murderer is committing "imperceptible murders", meaning that the killer is choosing victims who are already dying therefore meaning that the police would be less likely to suspect foul play.
Martin goes to the hospital where his girlfriend Lorna (
Leonor Watling
Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling (born 28 July 1975) is a Spanish film actress and singer.
Early life
Leonor Ceballos Watling was born on 28 July 1975 in Madrid, to a Spanish father from Province of CĂĄdiz, CĂĄdiz and an English mother, the ...
) works. There he meets a religious fanatic (
Dominique Pinon
Dominique Pinon (born 4 March 1955) is a French actor. He is known for appearing in films directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, often playing eccentric or grotesque characters.
Early life and education
Dominique Pinon was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loi ...
), who has a daughter in dire need of a lung transplant. He also runs into Seldom, who is visiting Kalman (
Alex Cox
Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with ''Repo Man (film), Repo Man'' and ''Sid and Nancy'', but since th ...
), a former student who went mad and suffers from a debilitating cancer, with bone involvement. Soon after, the patient who shares the room with Seldom's friend dies of an apparent lethal injection and the authorities receive a second symbol: two interlocking arcs.
Martin and Lorna's relationship becomes strained as he becomes more obsessed with Seldom and the murders and discovers that Lorna had once been Seldom's lover. At a
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the ev ...
concert, Martin sees Podorov acting suspiciously and the police give chase, only to discover that Podorov had merely intended to hang an insulting banner from the school roof. While they are distracted a member of the orchestra collapses and dies from respiratory failure. A drawing of a triangle is found on his music stand. Afterwards, Seldom tells Martin a story about a nineteenth century man who had written a diary listing ways to kill his wife. When the wife discovered the diary she killed her husband but was acquitted by a jury on grounds of self-defence. Decades later, the diary was discovered to have been forged by the woman's lover. Seldom uses this story to explain that the perfect crime is not one which is never solved, but one which is solved incorrectly.
All of Oxford's mathematics community is excited as a local researcher claims to have solved
Fermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been k ...
. The mathematicians, including Seldom and Martin, board a bus to travel to the conference, but Martin jumps out after seeing Lorna passing on the street. The two reconcile and agree to take a long holiday away from Oxford, mathematics, and Seldom. After making love with Lorna, Martin realises that the sequence the killer has sent them all consist of Pythagorean symbols and that the fourth one will be a
tetractys
The tetractys ( el, ÏΔÏÏαÎșÏÏÏ), or tetrad, or the tetractys of the decad is a triangular number, triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, which is the geometrical repr ...
, consisting of ten points.
The police, thinking that the killer is obsessed with Seldom, believe that he means to target the bus which Seldom and the other mathematicians are travelling in. However, the killer, as Martin realises, is actually the man he had met at the hospital. The man is a bus driver for a school for developmentally challenged children. Seeing the students as unfit to live and wanting to provide organ donors to save his own daughter's life, he blows up the bus, killing the children and himself. Afterwards, the police theorise that he had planned to escape the blast alive and had committed the other murders to present the deaths of the schoolchildren as the work of a serial murderer, thus shifting any blame from himself.
Afterwards, Lorna and Martin prepare to leave Oxford. However, Martin realises that Seldom has been lying to him the entire time. As Lorna leaves in disgust, Martin travels to meet Seldom. He explains what he has worked out.
Beth, wanting to be relieved of the responsibility of caring for her mother, had murdered the old woman as the police had initially suspected. In a panic, she had called Seldom, who came over to help cover up the crime. But Seldom arrived just as Martin did and so could not clean up the crime scene. Instead, he invented the story about receiving a note from the killer to direct suspicion away from Beth. The man at the hospital had died of natural causes with Seldom merely creating a false injection mark and leaving a symbol behind. The death of the musician at the concert was a fortuitous accident which Seldom took advantage of.
Seldom argues that while he did indeed lie, his actions resulted in no deaths. However, Martin points out that the bus bomber took his inspiration from Seldom's string of murders. Seldom counters that all actions have consequences, some unintentional, and that one of Martin's casual remarks to Beth had led to her murdering her mother.
Mathematical and philosophical references
The characters debate several mathematical, physical and philosophical concepts such as logical series,
Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox,
Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 â 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...
's
Principle of Uncertainty
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...
,
Gödel's Theorem,
circle
A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. Equivalently, it is the curve traced out by a point that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is const ...
s, the
Vesica Piscis
The vesica piscis is a type of lens, a mathematical shape formed by the intersection of two disks with the same radius, intersecting in such a way that the center of each disk lies on the perimeter of the other. In Latin, "vesica piscis" literal ...
, the possibility of
perfect crime
Perfect crimes are crimes that are undetected, unattributed to an identifiable perpetrator, or otherwise unsolved or unsolvable as a kind of technical achievement on the part of the perpetrator. The term is used colloquially in law and fiction (es ...
,
Fermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been k ...
and its proof by
Professor Wiles, the
Taniyama conjecture, the
tetraktys
The tetractys ( el, ÏΔÏÏαÎșÏÏÏ), or tetrad, or the tetractys of the decad is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, which is the geometrical representation of the ...
and the
Pythagoreans
Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC, based on and around the teachings and beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras established the first Pythagorean community in the ancient Greek colony of Kroton, ...
. There are references, also, of the
Butterfly effect.
Artistic license
"Logic series" is not actually an established topic in
mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is the study of logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of for ...
or
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
. Contrary to what Seldom states in his lecture at the beginning of the film, the argument of Wittgenstein's ''
Tractatus'' does not actually proceed by the use of equations (with the exception of a few simple equations in Wittgenstein's introduction of the
truth tables
A truth table is a mathematical table used in logicâspecifically in connection with Boolean algebra, boolean functions, and propositional calculusâwhich sets out the functional values of logical expressions on each of their functional argumen ...
) and it is not expressed in the formal language of mathematical logic; the argument is rather a philosophical argument expressed in normal, albeit idiosyncratic, language.
Moreover, Professor
Andrew Wiles
Sir Andrew John Wiles (born 11 April 1953) is an English mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specializing in number theory. He is best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he was awar ...
, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, is represented as "Professor Wilkin" of
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
in the film, and Fermat's Last Theorem is represented as "Bormat's Last Theorem".
Contrary to a statement made early in the film, electromechanical computers (namely the "
Bombe
The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functiona ...
") played a crucial role in the breaking of the German
"Enigma" cipher by British (and earlier, Polish) cryptographers during WW2.
Cast
*
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28, 1981) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of Frodo Baggins in the ''Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy (2001â2003) and '' The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'' (2012).
Wood ...
as Martin, a US student
*
John Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 â 25 January 2017) was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in t ...
as Arthur Seldom, a British authority on logical series
*
Leonor Watling
Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling (born 28 July 1975) is a Spanish film actress and singer.
Early life
Leonor Ceballos Watling was born on 28 July 1975 in Madrid, to a Spanish father from Province of CĂĄdiz, CĂĄdiz and an English mother, the ...
as Lorna, a Spanish nurse
*
Julie Cox
Julie Cox is an English actress. She played Princess Irulan in the Sci Fi Channel's 2000 miniseries ''Frank Herbert's Dune'' and its 2003 sequel, ''Frank Herbert's Children of Dune''. She also played The Childlike Empress in ''The Neverending S ...
as Beth Eagleton, a musician, daughter of Mrs. Eagleton
*
Dominique Pinon
Dominique Pinon (born 4 March 1955) is a French actor. He is known for appearing in films directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, often playing eccentric or grotesque characters.
Early life and education
Dominique Pinon was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loi ...
as Frank, father of an ill girl waiting for an
organ transplant
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transpo ...
*
Burn Gorman
Burn Hugh Winchester Gorman (born 1 September 1974) is an English actor and musician. He is known for his roles as Owen Harper in the BBC series ''Torchwood'' (2006â2008), Phillip Stryver in ''The Dark Knight Rises'' (2012), Karl Tanner in the ...
as Yuri Ivanovich Podorov, a crank mathematician
*
Jim Carter as Inspector Petersen
*
Danny Sapani
Danny Sapani (born 15 November 1970) is a British actor who works in British, American, and Indian films. He is best known for appearing in ''Misfits'', '' Doctor Who'', ''Penny Dreadful'', ''The Crown'', '' Star Wars: The Last Jedi'' and '' Bl ...
as Scott
*
Anna Massey
Anna Raymond Massey (11 August 19373 July 2011) was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel ''Hotel du Lac'', a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, ha ...
as Mrs. Julia Eagleton, Martin's landlady and Seldom's friend
*
Alex Cox
Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with ''Repo Man (film), Repo Man'' and ''Sid and Nancy'', but since th ...
as Kalman, a demented mathematician with terminal cancer
Production
![White Horse - Oxford Murders film set](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/White_Horse_-_Oxford_Murders_film_set.jpg)
The film is a Spanish-British-French production directed by Spanish
Ălex de la Iglesia
Alejandro "Ălex" de la Iglesia Mendoza (born 4 December 1965) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former comic book artist.
De la Iglesia's films combine grotesque and very dark elements such as death and murder: most of his ...
. Before the confirmation of
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28, 1981) is an American actor and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of Frodo Baggins in the ''Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy (2001â2003) and '' The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'' (2012).
Wood ...
in the film, Mexican actor
Gael GarcĂa Bernal
Gael GarcĂa Bernal (; born 30 November 1978) is a Mexican actor and producer. He is best known for his performances in the films '' Bad Education'', '' The Motorcycle Diaries'', ''Amores perros'', ''Y tu mamĂĄ tambiĂ©n'', ''Babel'', '' Coco'', ...
had been considered for the role of the mathematics student. There were some weeks of speculation on who would play the lead. On 26 December 2006 Tornasol Films announced that Wood was cast in the lead role. de la Iglesia commented that he convinced Wood to accept the role for the script. De la Iglesia also praised Wood: "I'm delighted to work with Elijah, who undoubtedly has the most powerful eyes in the industry and who is perfect for the part".
British actor
John Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt (22 January 1940 â 25 January 2017) was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. Hurt was regarded as one of Britain's finest actors. Director David Lynch described him as "simply the greatest actor in t ...
was cast in the role of a professor of the university, who helps the young student in his quest to try to stop a series of murders. Actor
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films in a career spanning seven decades, and is considered a British film ico ...
had been considered for this role.
De la Iglesia described daily in his blog the peculiar situations that happened during the production of the film. The film is his first foray outside his typical black comedy genre into more dramatic fare.
Filming began on 22 January 2007 and finished on 24 March, with locations in
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and the
Cast Courts of the
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
of London.
Release
The film was picked up for UK release by
Odeon Sky Filmworks
Odeon Sky Filmworks is a joint venture between Odeon Cinemas and British Sky Broadcasting designed to bring film titles to UK audiences in cinemas and at home.
Called âOdeon and Sky Filmworksâ (FILMWORKS), the collaboration between SKY and O ...
, opening on 25 April 2008, and had a DVD release in the UK on 1 September 2008. However in the US, it was not picked up for release until 2010, with
VOD set for 2 July 2010 and also theatres on 6 August 2010, distributed by
Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures is an American film distributor. It is a subsidiary of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment.
Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films. Mag ...
.
The DVD and Blu-ray Disc versions of the film were released on 5 October 2010.
Reception
''The Oxford Murders'' received mostly negative reviews. David Lewis, a critic for the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'', wrote that despite the fact that "there were plenty of talented people involved", the film had a "clunky script" and was "just plain boring, from beginning to end". Jonathan Holland from ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' was less critical, calling the film a "polished but verbose whodunit", though he found fault with the dialogue and the romantic subplot. The review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gives the film a rating of .
Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. He is Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Pullum is a co-author of ''The Cambridge Gram ...
, a professor of linguistics, wrote a scathing review.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford Murders
2000s thriller films
2008 films
British crime thriller films
British crime drama films
British mystery films
British thriller drama films
English-language Spanish films
English-language French films
Films about mathematics
Films based on Argentine novels
Films based on thriller novels
Films directed by Ălex de la Iglesia
Films set in 1993
Films set in London
Films shot in Oxfordshire
Films shot in London
Murder mystery films
Spanish crime thriller films
Spanish crime drama films
Spanish mystery films
Spanish thriller drama films
French crime thriller films
French crime drama films
French mystery films
French thriller drama films
Films set in the University of Oxford
Films scored by Roque Baños
Films with screenplays by Jorge GuerricaechevarrĂa
Films produced by Ălvaro Augustin
Tornasol Films films
2000s English-language films
2000s British films
2000s French films
2000s Spanish films