BEFORE: Sometimes, once I get on a U.K. theme, it makes sense to stay there for a while, that's just how the linking tends to work. So "Albert Nobbs" was set in Dublin, Ireland, and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is based (very loosely) on a British novel. Tonight's film is set at Trinity College at Cambridge University, in the mathematics department. Lewis Carroll was also a mathematics professor, but he was an Oxford man.
Stephen Fry carries over from "Alice Through the Looking Glass", where he provided the voice of the Cheshire Cat.
THE PLOT: The story of the life and academic career of the pioneer Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and his friendship with his mentor, Professor G.H. Hardy.
AFTER: It's not easy for the average person to understand complex mathematics - in high-school I sort of got as far as Algebra II before I started to lose track of what I was doing, or perhaps why I was doing it. I stuck it out for two more years - trigonometry and calculus, but by then the thrill was gone. What the hell is calculus, anyway, does anybody know? Something about calculating the area under a curve - who cares? I still did the work and worked out the derivatives, but that didn't mean I understood it. I was on my high school's math team, but when it came to trig, I learned how to be a good guesser, after finding out that the more complicated the problem, the more likely the answer was to be "zero".
So I kind of feel for the man portrayed here, Srinivasa Ramanujan, for whom math is more intuitive, he can see the theories in his head, but is unwilling at first to do the work necessary to prove his theories. (The difference between us, of course, is that I was often guessing at the answers in 12th grade math, and this guy had the right answers, he KNEW he was right, he just couldn't prove it.).
But in a FILM about such a man, I would hope that the filmmakers would be able to properly express to the members of the audience who aren't math experts what it is this man was capable of, and why it was important. I was left unsure about why his theories were a big deal - I sort of understood what "partitions" were (the partition of the number four is five, because that number can be expressed five ways - 1+1+1+1, 1+1+2, 1+3, 2+2, and 4+0)but had to scratch my head when presented with his formula that, what, estimated the partitions for larger numbers? Again, who cares, if someone else can get there using simple addition, even if that takes longer?
But this does help give me a rough theme for the week so far, which is something about people who are different and unique, but have to stand out and succeed in a world that doesn't support them - Albert Nobbs had to dress like a man to work and save money for his dreams, Alice was the only human in Wonderland and had to find the Mad Hatter's lost family, and tonight this Indian math expert has to excel at a university of British people who don't want him to succeed. All of them learned they had to follow the rules - the rules of courtship, the rules of time travel, the rules of submitting math proofs.
Sometimes three films in a row that seem very different turn out to not be so different after all...
NITPICK POINT: How come these brilliant mathematicians, who are supposed to be so smart, all seem to believe that the apple tree in their college square is the same one from which an apple fell and hit Isaac Newton on the head? There's no way that same tree would be there after 250 years, or if it were the same tree, it would be enormous. But most likely a tree would not live that long? For that matter, why do they all regard an apple hitting Newton on the head as being some kind of big deal? Gravity was a B.S. discovery, because before Newton formulated his theory, everybody already knew that things fall down. So let's face it, Newton was a hack and a poser.
Also starring Jeremy Irons (last seen in "Justice League"), Dev Patel (last seen in "Chappie"), Toby Jones (last seen in 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Jeremy Northam (last seen in "The Invasion"), Devika Bhise, Kevin McNally (last seen in "Legend"), Malcolm Sinclair (last seen in "Casino Royale"), Enzo Cilenti, San Shella, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Arundhati Nag.
RATING: 5 out of 10 positive integers
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