Ron Raitz facilitated this month’s movie group.
A heartening drama about a slow-blooming friendship between two brilliant mathematicians, The Man Who Knew Infinity is a 2015 British biographical drama film about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who shows an immense fascination with mathematics, even though he has no formal training in the subject.
He fills notebooks with equations and formulas and explains to his wife that there are beautiful patterns in everything and mathematics is like painting without colors.
It is very edifying to witness the friendship that slowly blooms between two mathematicians: Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons, is a pragmatist and atheist, and Ramanujan, played by Dev Patel, is a Hindu believer who claims that every math equation expresses a “thought of God.”
Dev Patel, who was so marvelous in Slumdog Millionaire, effectively depicts Ramanujan’s Hindu zeal, his passion for mathematics, and his reverence for its beauty. In another richly detailed and nuanced performance, Jeremy Irons reveals the admirable efforts of a cerebral scholar who finds the courage to stand up for the mind-blowing work of his friend in the face of steep opposition and racial prejudice. Both men would no doubt agree with Henry David Thoreau who said: “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”
Click for the playsheet: The Man Who Knew Infinity Playsheet
