The Man Who Knew Too Much is also about society and about our relationships, though the film fails completely to delve into Hardy's fairly well known homosexuality. A devout Hindu and vegetarian, Ramanujan nearly starves himself to death during the wartime rationing and initially leaves his new wife and family behind, a strictly forbidden act, in order to chase this vision he has of publishing these theories that he believes passionately will change the world for the better. Married off in an arranged marriage to Janaki, played beautifully by newcomer Devika Bhise, Ramanujan faces overt discrimination at Cambridge as a non-Brit despite the fact that India was still a British colony at the time.

The Man Who Knew Infinity is as much about Ramanujan's journey as it is anything else. Irons is simply stellar here as he somehow makes a pure intellectual without an ounce of divine inspiration into an emotionally resonant guide who hardly ever expresses an emotion. Hardy, a brilliant British eccentric who initially adopts a teacher/student relationship with Ramanujan that slowly evolves into more of a mutual admiration society and friend of some sort. Ramanujan's self-education is rivaled only by his self-determination, a determination that takes him from his home in Madras, after trial and error, to Trinity College at Cambridge and into the world of G.H. The film is set in the pre-World War I era, Ramanujan being a self-taught Indian guided by his Hindu faith to understand the world using mathematical concepts and theorems I couldn't possibly begin to understand or explain. Instead, using Ramanujan as its guide, this is a film about genius and obstacles and perseverance and, perhaps most of all, one's desire to leave a permanent impact on the way at any cost. Yet, perhaps wisely, the film is not actually about mathematics and I'd dare say it's not even about Ramanujan himself. Played with sensitivity and sophistication by Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Srinivasa Ramanujan was a divinely inspired genius whose formulas have, for the most part, held up to this very day.Īs a film, The Man Who Knew Infinity is a rarity in that it is a deeply intelligent film that doesn't shy away from its intelligence.

I'm not sure that a guy who openly confesses to having scored a mere 350 on his math SAT is the target for director Matt Brown's engaging film The Man Who Knew Infinity, an intelligent yet involving film that tells the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a man whom most consider to be one of, if not the, greatest mathematicians in history.

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