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Movie Review — The Man Who knew Infinity

Lost in numbers

The Man Who knew Infinity is a quasi-biopic on the Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), born in a poor Brahmin family steeped in rituals and confined to conservatism.

Lost in numbers

A still from The Man Who knew Infinity



Johnson Thomas

The Man Who knew Infinity is a quasi-biopic on the Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), born in a poor Brahmin family steeped in rituals and confined to conservatism. Ignored and ridiculed by the people around him, Ramanujan is relegated to working as an accounts clerk in order to take care of his family consisting of a young wife, Janki(Devika Bhise), and his widowed mother (Arundhati Nag). 

We first encounter him in 1913 Madras, India, as an impoverished 25-year-old whose obsessive pursuance of numbers and formulas has taken precedent over all other commitments in life. Narayana Iyer (Dhritiman Chatterji) takes him on as a shipping clerk in exchange for being tutored in the finer aspects of mathematics.  His overwhelming passion for mathematics keeps him away from the wife too. 

A year later, he has been invited to Trinity College, Cambridge to show his work to the veritable who’s who of mathematics. Professor Hardy (Jeremy Irons) and Prof John Edensor Littlewood (Toby Jones) are the ones who champion his cause with the elite among the learned there. But the task is not easy. 

The narrative sticks religiously to the script based on Robert Kanigel’s book. While it’s interesting in parts and has emotional strong points, there are also plentiful boring passages that fail to connect. The fish out of water syndrome experienced by Ramanujan while in Cambridge comes across quite well. The racial slurs and demeaning insults he has to brave while residing there makes for interesting dramatics. 

While Dev Patel manages to raise the level of his own performance, he has been unable to bridge the gap between performance and immersion. As Ramanujan, he is able to mark up the nobility and charm but unable to sit well with the native traits that the character asks of him. Jeremy Irons though is first rate. 

This film fails to achieve the complexity of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and the interpersonal strength of ‘The Theory Of Everything’ - instead we get a less-than-befitting homage that appears to be well-intentioned, but not quite high-minded as the subject it propounds!

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