The Man Who Knew Infinity

Adapted from Robert Kanigel’s book of the same title, The Man Who Knew Infinity narrates the story of Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel). The script, however, mainly adheres to Ramanujan’s glorified years in Cambridge, leaving out much about his initial struggle as well as his bedridden final days. Brown’s focus mainly seems to be on highlighting his relationship with G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), the Cambridge professor who made painstaking efforts to give Ramanujan his due recognition.

The Hardy-Ramanujan relationship, which in the former’s words was “the one romantic incident” of his life, takes the centre stage in this film starting off with an initial tension where Hardy strives to transform the self-taught Ramanujan to a more disciplined mainstream mathematician. Eventually, though, we see this relationship between an atheist and a rigorous Hindu Brahmin evolve into something like a friendship.

Despite focusing on Ramanujan’s time spent in Cambridge the movie fails to give any substantial glimpse into his abilities as a mathematician. It ends up being a mere biopic, mainly focused on Ramanujan’s struggles to fit in and his long distance love affair with his wife Janaki (Devika Bhise) intended to appeal to the audience’s sympathy but falters due to its inability to build a connection.

When it comes to casting, Brown seems to have chosen to not conform to history. Dev Patel doesn’t bare any resemblance to the short and stout Ramanujan and although the actor has definitely come a long way from his Slumdog Millionaire days he doesn’t quite reflect the brilliance of this prodigious character. Jeremy Irons, though lacks the boyish looks of G.H. Hardy, is definitely not lacking in the charm (makes us wonder whether it would have been a better movie if it was based on Hardy). Devika Bhise plays her part well but in reality, Janaki was a child bride who was all but nine when Ramanujan was twenty.

Something that strikes me is Brown’s portrayal of Komalatammal (Ramanujan’s mother played by Arundhati Nag) who has solely been depicted as the evil mother-in-law, right out of some Hindi soap opera,  while in actuality there was much more to her character. In fact, she was a woman of great prowess and had a significant influence on Ramanujan’s life.