''The Man Who Knew Infinity'' is a 2015 British
biographical
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
film about the Indian mathematician
Srinivasa Ramanujan, based on the 1991
book of the same name by
Robert Kanigel
Robert Kanigel (born May 28, 1946) is an American biographer and science writer, known as the author of seven books and more than 400 articles, essays, and reviews.
Early life
Born in Brooklyn, Kanigel graduated from Stuyvesant High School in N ...
.
The film stars
Dev Patel
Dev Patel (; born 23 April 1990) is a British actor. His breakthrough came in 2008 with the leading role of Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle's drama ''Slumdog Millionaire'', for which Patel was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Lead ...
as
Srinivasa Ramanujan, a real-life mathematician who, after growing up poor in
Madras,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, earns admittance to
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor,
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...
, portrayed by
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons (; born 19 September 1948) is an English actor and activist. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969 and has appeared in many West End theatre ...
.
Filming began in August 2014 at
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
. The film had its world premiere as a gala presentation at the
2015 Toronto International Film Festival
The 40th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 10 to 20 September 2015. On 28 July 2015 the first wave of films to be screened at the Festival was announced. Jean-Marc Vallée's '' Demolition'' starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Na ...
,
and was selected as the opening gala of the 2015
Zurich Film Festival
Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) is an annual film festival that has been held in Zürich, Switzerland, since 2005.
The festival's main focus is to promote emerging filmmakers from all over the world. In three competition categories only first, secon ...
. It also played other film festivals including
Singapore International Film Festival
The Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) ( Chinese: 新加坡国际电影节) is the longest-running film festival in Singapore. Founded in 1987, the festival has a focus on showcasing international films and providing a global platform fo ...
and
Dubai International Film Festival
The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF, ar, مهرجان دبي السينمائي الدولي) is the leading film festival in the Arab region. The 12th edition of DIFF took place from December 9 – 16, 2015. In 2018, the DIFF announc ...
.
Plot
At the turn of the twentieth century,
Srinivasa Ramanujan is a struggling and indigent citizen in the city of
Madras in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
working at menial jobs at the edge of poverty. While performing his menial labor, his employers notice that he seems to have exceptional skills in mathematics and they begin to make use of him for rudimentary accounting tasks. It becomes equally clear to his employers, who are college-educated, that Ramanujan's mathematical insights exceed the simple accounting tasks they are assigning to him and soon they encourage him to make his personal writings in mathematics available to the general public and to start to contact professors of mathematics at universities by writing to them. One such letter is sent to
G.H. Hardy, a famous mathematician at
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
, who begins to take a special interest in Ramanujan.
Hardy soon invites Ramanujan to Cambridge to test his mettle as a potential theoretical mathematician. Ramanujan is overwhelmed by the opportunity and decides to pursue Hardy's offer, even though this means he must leave his wife Janaki for an extended period. He parts lovingly with Janaki and promises to keep up his correspondence with her.
Upon arrival at Cambridge, Ramanujan encounters various forms of racial prejudice and finds his adjustment to life in England more difficult than expected. Hardy, though much impressed by Ramanujan's abilities, remains concerned about Ramanujan's ability to communicate effectively due to his lack of experience in writing
proofs, but with perseverance, he manages to get Ramanujan published in a major journal. In the meantime, Ramanujan is diagnosed with
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
and his frequent letters home to his wife remain unanswered after many months. Hardy continues to see much more promise in Ramanujan. However, he remains unaware of the personal difficulties his student is having with his housing and with his lack of contact with his family back home in India. Ramanujan's health worsens while he continues delving into deeper and more profound research interests in mathematics under the guidance of Hardy and others at Cambridge.
Janaki, after much elapsed time, wonders why she has not heard from Ramanujan and eventually discovers that his mother has been intercepting his letters, and withholding hers to him. Hardy makes special efforts to get Ramanujan's now recognizably exceptional mathematical skills accepted by the university, by nominating Ramanujan for a fellowship of Trinity College. At first, Hardy fails for reasons related to college politics and racial prejudice. By gaining the support of key members of the college, Hardy again successfully nominates Ramanujan as a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...
, thereby forcing his acceptance as a fellow of Trinity. Ramanujan is eventually reunited with his family in India, though his declining health, exacerbated by poor housing and harsh winter weather in England, ultimately takes its toll and leads to his death aged 32, soon after his recognition as a mathematician of international merit and importance.
Cast
*
Dev Patel
Dev Patel (; born 23 April 1990) is a British actor. His breakthrough came in 2008 with the leading role of Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle's drama ''Slumdog Millionaire'', for which Patel was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Lead ...
as
Srinivasa Ramanujan
*
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons (; born 19 September 1948) is an English actor and activist. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969 and has appeared in many West End theatre ...
as
G. H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...
*
Devika Bhise as Janaki
*
Toby Jones
Tobias Edward Heslewood Jones''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 7 September 1966) is an English actor. Jones made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama '' Orlando'' in 1992. H ...
as
John Edensor Littlewood
John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. Hardy, Srinivasa Ramanu ...
*
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring ...
as
Sir Francis Spring
*
Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Philip Northam (born 1 December 1961) is an English actor and singer. After a number of television roles, he earned attention as Mr. Knightley in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen's '' Emma''. He has appeared in the films ''An Idea ...
as
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
*
Kevin McNally
Kevin Robert McNally (born 27 April 1956) is an English actor and writer. He is known for portraying Joshamee Gibbs in the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' film series.
Early life
Born in Bristol, McNally spent his early years in Birmingham, atte ...
as
Major MacMahon
*
Enzo Cilenti
Vincenzo Leonardo "Enzo" Cilenti (born 8 August 1974) is an English actor, known for his roles in works such as '' The Theory of Everything'', '' Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'', and ''Game of Thrones''.
Early life
Cilenti was born in Bradford ...
as Doctor
*
Arundhati Nag
Arundhati Nag (née Rao; born 1955/1956) is an Indian actress. She has been involved with multilingual Theatre in India, for over 25 years, first in Mumbai where she got involved with Indian People's Theatre Association ( IPTA), and did various ...
as Ramanujan's mother
*
Dhritiman Chatterjee
Dhritiman Chatterjee is an Indian actor. He began his acting career in 1970 as the protagonist of Satyajit Ray's ''Pratidwandi'' (''The Adversary''). Most of his acting work has been in India's "parallel", or independent, cinema with filmmaker ...
as Narayana Iyer
*
Shazad Latif
Shazad Latif (born Iqbal Amin; 8 July 1988) is a British actor, who starred as Tariq Masood in the BBC TV series '' Spooks'', Clem Fandango on '' Toast of London'', and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in ''Penny Dreadful''. In 2017, he was cast as Chi ...
as
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS (29 June 1893– 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the fir ...
*
Roger Narayan
Raj Narayan is an Indian actor who works in predominantly Kannada and English-language films. He is known for playing one of the leads in ''U Turn'' (2016).
Career
Roger Narayan studied engineering at BITS Pilani before deciding to pursue his p ...
as an
iyengar
Iyengar (also spelt Ayyangar or Aiyengar, pronounced ) refers to the name of an ethnoreligious community of Tamil-speaking Hindu Brahmins, whose members follow Sri Vaishnavism and the Visishtadvaita philosophy propounded by Ramanuja. Found mos ...
While Irons is more than 40 years Patel's senior, the real Hardy was only 10 years older than Ramanujan.
Production
Tamil actor
R. Madhavan was initially selected to portray the lead role in the film after agreeing terms during January 2012, but the makers eventually decided they wanted an international actor to play Ramanujan.
Reception
Film 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 ...
reports that 63% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 131 reviews with an average score of 6.2/10. The critics' consensus reads: "''The Man Who Knew Infinity'' might be a tad too conventional to truly do its subject justice, but
Dev Patel
Dev Patel (; born 23 April 1990) is a British actor. His breakthrough came in 2008 with the leading role of Jamal Malik in Danny Boyle's drama ''Slumdog Millionaire'', for which Patel was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Lead ...
(Srinivasa Ramanujan) and
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons (; born 19 September 1948) is an English actor and activist. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969 and has appeared in many West End theatre ...
(G.H. Hardy) elevate the end result beyond mere
biopic formula."
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 56 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
After the film's world premiere, Allan Hunter in ''
Screen Daily'' found the film to be "a well-heeled, sincere production following the memories of Ramanujan's English mentor and friend... The film tells such a good story that it is hard to resist. The old-fashioned virtues of a well-told tale and a particularly fine performance from Jeremy Irons should endear the film to that supposedly under-served older demographic who like to turn out for a weekday matinee... Mathematics plays a key role in the story, but in a way that is entirely accessible, allowing the viewer to comprehend the advances that Ramanujan made and why his legacy remains so important almost a century after his death."
Deborah Young in ''
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...
'' found the film to be a "respectable but all too conventional biopic".
Mathematicians
Ken Ono
Ken Ono (born March 20, 1968) is a Japanese-American mathematician who specializes in number theory, especially in integer partitions, modular forms, umbral moonshine, the Riemann Hypothesis and the fields of interest to Srinivasa Ramanujan. He ...
and
Manjul Bhargava
Manjul Bhargava (born 8 August 1974) is a Canadian-American mathematician. He is the Brandon Fradd, Class of 1983, Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, the Stieltjes Professor of Number Theory at Leiden University, and also holds A ...
collaborated on the film, which has been praised by mathematicians and scientists for its accurate mathematics and authentic portrayal of mathematicians.
George E. Andrews, former President of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
, praised the film for its moving portrayal of the deep relationship between Ramanujan and Hardy.
The
London Mathematical Society proclaimed that the film "outshines ''
Good Will Hunting
''Good Will Hunting'' is a 1997 American psychological drama film directed by Gus Van Sant, and written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It stars Robin Williams, Damon, Affleck, Stellan Skarsgård and Minnie Driver.
The film received positive r ...
'' in almost every way".
Reviewing the film for ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'', Andrew Robinson wrote that "the film took more than ten years to create. It is worth the wait."
Release
Mister Smith Entertainment
Mister Smith Entertainment is a British film distribution company involved in the acquisition, financing, production, licensing and distribution sales of films for the global theatrical market. Co-founded by David Garrett and Constantin Film, Mi ...
handled international sales of the film.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
released the film in the United Kingdom on 8 April 2016.
IFC Films
IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes mainly independent films under its own name, select foreign films and documentaries under its ...
released it in the U.S. on 29 April 2016.
See also
*
''Ramanujan'' – a 2014 Indian biopic of Ramanujan
*
List of films about mathematicians
This is a list of feature films that include mathematicians, scientists who use math or references to mathematicians.
About mathematics
Films where mathematics is central to the plot:
* '' 21'' (2008) – A group of MIT current and former stude ...
*
Partition (number theory)
*
Ramanujan's congruences
In mathematics, Ramanujan's congruences are some remarkable congruences for the partition function ''p''(''n''). The mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan (; born Srinivasa Ramanujan Aiyangar, ; 22 December 188726 April 19 ...
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Man Who Knew Infinity, The
2015 biographical drama films
2015 films
British biographical drama films
Bertrand Russell
Biographical films about mathematicians
Films about mathematics
Films based on biographies
Films set in Chennai
Films set in England
Films shot in England
Srinivasa Ramanujan
2015 drama films
Warner Bros. films
Films shot in Cambridgeshire
2010s English-language films
2010s British films