 "Jeremy Irons as GH Hardy and Dev Patel as Srinivasa Ramanujan at Trinity College, Cambridge in The Man Who Knew Infinity. Pic Courtesy: TIFF")
Before adapting American author Robert Kanigel’s book, The Man Who Knew Infinity, to the big screen, director Matthew Brown first had to undergo a comprehensive examination. His first meeting with the author lasted nearly five hours. “He grilled me about the book and by the end of the meeting I felt as if I had passed some kind of test,” recalls Brown.
It was a fitting preparation for the task that lay ahead: telling the story of Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and his groundbreaking collaboration with English mathematician G H Hardy at Trinity College in Cambridge. Now, Brown has also passed the screen test, having premiered at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival The Man Who Knew Infinity, a film that is both informative and engaging.
“I saw the film in London a couple of months ago and was very impressed. I didn’t know the story of the mathematician at the centre of it actually, and so I was really intrigued to watch it and to understand how revolutionary his thinking was,” says Cameron Bailey, artistic director of TIFF.
In his most challenging role yet, Dev Patel plays the Indian genius who was born in 1887 in Erode and grew up in the ancient temple town of Kumbakonam. “I wanted to do the role because it is rare for an actor who looks like I do to come across something that is so meaty, and I knew the film would attract stellar artists who I’d get to act opposite,” says Patel. The tall, lean Patel is convincing enough as the stocky Ramanujan; his bigger challenge is matching wits with the commanding presence of Oscar winner Jeremy Irons who plays Hardy and dominates every scene between the two.
The film deals briefly with Ramanujan’s poverty and struggle to have his work recognised in Madras. Newcomer Devika Bhise delivers a moving performance as Ramanujan’s young wife, Janaki, who understands her husband’s unique gift but has no way of understanding his work. Eager to share his ideas with his bride, Ramanujan describes his world of numbers to her as painting without colours. Arundhati Nag plays Ramanujan’s possessive mother, who would later intercept Janaki’s letters to him, even as he suffered, lonely and ill in England, desperate to hear from his wife back home.
In his bosses, played by Dhritiman Chaterji and Stephen Fry, at his humble clerical job at Madras Port Trust, Ramanujan finds well-wishers who recognise the need to have his talent nurtured professionally. In England, Hardy is the only one among three mathematicians approached by Ramanujan, to discern the potential in his impossible numbers. As he prepares to leave India, Ramanujan, an orthodox Brahmin, is troubled by the requirements for his impending voyage — he will have to cut his hair, and cross the seas — but takes courage from the permission he has received from his favorite goddess Namagiri, the consort of Narasimha in the Namakkal temple, near his native Erode.
At Cambridge, the devotee of Namagiri runs smack into the atheist Hardy, who insists on proofs for Ramanujan’s seemingly magical theorems. The Englishman’s reliance on rigour has no room for Ramanujan’s earnest explanation that Namagiri writes on his tongue and delivers solutions to him in his dreams.
At the film’s core is this interaction between Ramanujan and Hardy, mediated by supportive Trinity Fellows like John Littlewood and Bertrand Russell, who urge Hardy to give the Indian more leeway in his work. By focusing on their professional and personal interactions, Brown finds a way to interest the viewer in a film about complex mathematical principles the world is still trying to understand. But he also made sure the math in the film was sound by consulting with Ken Ono, a professor of mathematics at Atlanta’s Emory University and a Ramanujan scholar. Interestingly, Ono’s father himself was a mathematician and part of a group that helped install a statue of Ramanujan in his hometown, and had received a letter of thanks from his widow Janaki.
The film also captures Ramanujan’s struggles to adapt to life in England, the racism faced by him, both from Cambridge dons who denounce him as a charlatan, and in the town, and his increasing desperation to convince his peers of the integrity of his work. Hardy, who initially takes only an impersonal interest in Ramanujan’s work, gradually comes to regard him as a friend and their work as “the only romantic incident of my life”.
Explaining his approach to playing Hardy, Irons says, “We think of romance as love, but I don’t think it is; romance is just when life becomes more colourful, more lively, more vibrant, and I think this is perhaps what Hardy meant. It certainly was by his own admission that his time with Ramanujan was when he was the proudest of his work, and probably the happiest.”
(From left) Dev Patel, Devika Bhise, Jeremy Irons and director Matthew Brown at the premiere of The Man Who Knew Infinity at the Toronto International Film Festival. Pic Courtesy: Jeremy Chan
As Ramanujan lies in hospital with doctors treating him for tuberculosis, Hardy successfully berates and shames his fellow dons into accepting Ramanujan as a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College.
The Man Who Knew Infinity was the first film to receive permission to shoot at Trinity College, and the majesty of the historic campus pervades the screen. Production designer Luciana Arrighi says, “Everyone turned out to be delightful, including the Dons and Fellows, who were very interested in the story and wanted to keep the link between India and the United Kingdom.” Brown is also on surer footing here than in India. While the Indian locations, including Ramanujan’s house, temples and the beach look authentic, smaller details could have used more attention — Thenkalai Iyengars, the sect Ramanujan was born in, sport a “Y” rather than a “U” mark on the forehead, which is worn by Vadakalai Iyengars; and it’s odd to see an orthodox Vaishnavite of his era with an idol of Ganesha, a Shaivite deity.
Ramanujan, who died in Madras in 1920 aged just 32, a year after he returned from Cambridge, said an equation had no meaning for him unless it expressed a thought of God. But his god was not limited to a temple in Namakkal; he saw divinity in numbers everywhere, including on a taxicab. If you’re not already familiar with it, go ahead and Google 1729, the Hardy-Ramanujan number. Better yet, wait for the explanation in The Man Who Knew Infinity.
