When British philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that “mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty,” he may have been thinking of Srinivasa Ramanujan.
A Tamil from southern India, he was a lowly clerk with a gift for numbers when he received a scholarship to Cambridge University. Arriving in Britain in 1914, on the eve of World War I, he became the star pupil of G.H. Hardy, an eminent mathematician who recognized his protean talents.
Within a few years, Hardy’s Indian prodigy had made path-breaking contributions in such fields as mathematical analysis and number theory. Today, he’s regarded as a giant in mathematics.
Matthew Brown’s finely-wrought film, The Man Who Knew Infinity, is about his five-year sojourn at Cambridge’s Trinity College. Concentrating on his relationship with Hardy, his encounter with racism in Britain and his yearning for his wife back home, it opens in Canada on May 20.
Adapted from Robert Kanigel’s book, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, and starring Dev Patel as Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons as Hardy, it was shot on location in India and Cambridge, the first time movie cameras were allowed on the campus.
Although it’s a small film in terms of its tightly-focused narrative, The Man Who Knew Infinity is imbued with the aura of an epic. An obscure but fiercely ambitious and supremely intelligent young man makes his way from the backwaters of British India to the hallowed halls of a great university and dazzles his contemporaries with his stunning originality.
Ramanujan, expertly played by Patel, was a self-taught scholar whose life revolved around his first love, mathematics. Methodically filling his notebooks with arcane equations and theorems that no one could really fathom, he was an intellectual force of nature.
Clad in traditional Indian garb, he’s a self-absorbed person who has a high opinion of himself. “I’m really quite exceptional with numbers,” he blurts out in a show of self-confidence.
Landing a job in the accounts department of a minor company in Madras, he proves to be a brilliant employee whose destiny seems to have been demarcated but whose future is still very much of a question mark.
Ramanujan’s boss, being convinced that his findings need to be published, urges him to write to Hardy. Intrigued by his raw talent, Hardy invites him to Cambridge, where the incomparable Isaac Newton studied. It’s hard for him to leave India, say goodbye to his doting mother and lovely wife (Devika Bhise) and cross an alien ocean in contravention of Hindu teachings. But this is an opportunity of a lifetime he can’t afford to miss.
Hardy, sensitively portrayed by Irons, turns out to be a remote and rigorous taskmaster who requires Ramanujan to attend lectures and produce proofs of his theorems before they can be submitted for publication. Although mathematics unites them, Hardy and Ramanujan are as different as night and day. Hardy, an atheist, abides by the strictures of rationalism. Ramanujan, a believer, has immense faith in the powers of intuition.
These differences in outlook and temperament stir tensions. At one point, an exasperated Hardy says, “A little humility will go a long way.” Yet Hardy has deep respect and admiration for Ramanujan. “You dance with numbers to infinity,” he observes in awe.
But much to Ramanujan’s shock and disappointment, he encounters xenophobia, snobbery and bigotry at Cambridge. European notions of racial superiority add substance to the maxim that East and West are at odds. Yet Hardy and Ramanujan relate to each other as equals and form an indestructible bond.
Propped up by a sturdy screenplay, supported by an exceptionally fine cast and suffused with a haunting musical score evocative of India, The Man Who Knew Infinity is a radiant movie in every respect.