I'd never heard of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius level prodigy of a mathematician brought to England in 1914 by Prof GH Hardy to study at Cambridge and be his protégé. The film depicts all the predictable social, class and xenophobic issues of a dirt poor Indian with no formal training in mathematics landing in the exclusive coterie of an English ivy league university in pre-WW 1 England.
Dev Patel provides a strong performance as Ramanujan, and brings a solid dramatic persona to the role, contrasting with his earlier roles in the Exotic Marigold Hotels and Slumdog Millionaire. Jeremy Irons as Prof Hardy is well within his comfort zone and brings an assurance to the role, just edgy enough to be able to rattle the chain of academic snobbery.
As other reviewers have said, the mathematics was not easily followed, but this didn't matter – in some ways the film was probably stronger for it. The film captures the era and the settings are measured and realistic. The screenplay by the film's director Matt Brown is perhaps a bit obvious, with predictable social clichés and Ramanujan's long distance romance, which apparently may be somewhat fictionalised. But it tells the story clearly, if not with the insights that no doubt were there to be mined and revealed. It reminded me quite a lot of Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, but suffers in that comparison.
Dev Patel provides a strong performance as Ramanujan, and brings a solid dramatic persona to the role, contrasting with his earlier roles in the Exotic Marigold Hotels and Slumdog Millionaire. Jeremy Irons as Prof Hardy is well within his comfort zone and brings an assurance to the role, just edgy enough to be able to rattle the chain of academic snobbery.
As other reviewers have said, the mathematics was not easily followed, but this didn't matter – in some ways the film was probably stronger for it. The film captures the era and the settings are measured and realistic. The screenplay by the film's director Matt Brown is perhaps a bit obvious, with predictable social clichés and Ramanujan's long distance romance, which apparently may be somewhat fictionalised. But it tells the story clearly, if not with the insights that no doubt were there to be mined and revealed. It reminded me quite a lot of Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, but suffers in that comparison.