The Man Who Knew Infinity

10 years ago I was hired by a film finance company to cover THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY. The screenplay was packaged and, I think, in pre-production at the time.

Here is my script report. Was I right? Let me know what you think.

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ELEMENTS: Director: Matthew Brown. Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Jim Young, Sofia Sondervan. Confirmed cast: Jeremy Irons, Dev Patel.

LOGLINE: A mathematician at least equal to Isaac Newton, the self-educated Ramanujan travels from poverty in India to final acceptance in bigoted Oxbridge wartime academia.

COMMENT SUMMARY: This well executed script combines elements of GOOD WILL HUNTING, A BEAUTIFUL MIND and SHADOWLANDS and represents them in a Raj context. Pace is slow, but this is in keeping with a dialogue led, period drama, which employs the measured beat sheet of a ‘David Lean’ epic of empire. Maths is not obvious box office gold, but the quality of writing and the story’s historical, real life milieu make a solid case for investment.

OVERALL SCORE:  18/32 = 56%

CHARACTERS

Ramanujan – unparalleled maths prodigy who travels from lower caste India to ivory tower England and finds eventual acceptance before he dies tragically young

G.H. Hardy – the starched, priggish Cambridge don who befriends Ramanujan, believes in him, secretly loves him, and fights his corner in bigoted post Victorian England

John Littlewood – the bridge between Hardy and Ramanujan; he chooses to fight for his country as pacifist Hardy choses to fight for Ramanujan

PREMISE:

A young Indian maths prodigy finds acceptance of his genius, and race, in English academia.

SYNOPSIS: 

GH Hardy begins recounting his experiences of Ramanujan at Harvard and we see in flashback

Betrothed maths prodigy Ramanujan desperately tries to find work in Madras. He is rejected everywhere until he finds desk work at Sir Francis Spring’s office at Port Trust. He takes up residence in the home of his family with his new bride Janaki. His brilliance is spotted by his companion Narayana Iyer, who persuades Ramanujan that his genius cannot be acknowledged in Madras. Narayana convinces Spring of Ramanujan’s genius, and Spring helps by recommending Ramanujan to GH Hardy at Trinity College, Cambridge, with written evidence of Ramanujan’s work. Hardy is sceptical, but eventually convinced; he agrees to invite Ramanujan to Trinity College, knowing it’s breaking caste for Ramanujan to travel abroad.  Ramanujan leaves his beloved bride Janaki behind and travels to Trinity College, Cambridge, England.

Ramanujan struggles with the food and the weather, but starts to work with Hardy on math. He makes allies in the form of Littlewood and Bertrand Russell, and finds bigotry everywhere, especially in the form of Boer War veteran R.A. Herman. Hardy is staggered by Ramanujan’s math notebooks, which are beyond the understanding of anyone at the university.

He encourages Ramanujan to establish proofs, but Ramanujan is content with intuition. Ramanujan meets and makes friends with the only other Indian student there: Chandra Mahalanobis. Ramanujan and Herman clash; Hardy warns him to keep his head down. WW1 breaks out.  Ramanujan’s mother stops posting his wife Janaki’s letters to him because she fears that if Janaki goes to England to be with him, he will never come back. Husband and wife lose contact. Loneliness, bad diet, war and the British winter start to take their toll on Ramanujan. Ramanujan is beaten by army cadets on racial grounds.

Hardy joins Bertrand Russell in campaigning against the war. Littlewood by now has joined the army; he further convinces Hardy of Ramanujan otherworldly maths genius – although his work on primes is wrong. Hardy harangues Ramanujan for his lack of proof; Ramanujan fights back, telling him that maths is divine, and thus all Hardy doesn’t believe even as Hardy doesn’t really believe in him.  Vice Master Jackson and Herman confront Hardy about Ramanujan’s status – and Hardy’s activities as a pacifist. Ramanujan begins to get sick with tubercular, and the sickness gets worse fast.

Ramanujan and Chandra experience an air raid in London. To Ramanujan everything is numbers. Hardy puts Ramanujan forward for a fellowship at Trinity, which is denied. Feeling abandoned by Janaki, Ramanujan’s health further declines. He attempts suicide, but fails. Hardy finally sees Ramanujan as the person he is, and accepts him. Hardy suppresses his love for him. Ramanujan makes a major breakthrough in math and gains wider faculty recognition.

The faculty represents Ramanujan for a fellowship, which this time succeeds. He becomes the first Indian to be accepted as a fellow of the Royal Society of Trinity. Ramanujan is elated, and very sick now. In Madras, Janaki finds Ramanujan’s letters to her intercepted by Ramanujan’s mother. She realises Ramanujan has not forsaken her. Ramanujan bids a fond farewell to Hardy and travels back to India. He is reunited with Janaki. Ramanujan works on his formulae until the very end. Hardy receives news of Ramanujan’s death in Cambridge. He is desolate.

Flashback over, Hardy ends his lecture on Ramanujan, whose genius status is now assured.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS: 

GOOD WILL HUNTING proved that if the writing is good enough, academia sells. Instead of modern cynicism, we have the contrast between early 20th Century India and stiff upper lip Britain. Maths prodigy Ramanujan bestrides these worlds with a touching degree of big brained fish-out-of-water charm and plausibility. Emotion is present, but in that British old school way, not laboured, as neither is the homosexual subtext. The characters and dialogue suit the epoch.

There’s just enough math-speak to keep those interested in maths interested, but not so many equations that we feel the writer is showing off. Measured and restrained are two adjectives that describe this script as well as the script describes the worlds of its locations. Emotionally and sexually repressed Hardy is well sketched, as is his eventual love for genius Ramanujan, who sees the world through wide, innocent eyes as numbers. Even the sickness that kills him is reduced (elevated) to integers, and love is compared to zero/infinity: neither can be reduced.

Mathematics is presented as something divine, which has a transformative effect in atheist G.H. Hardy in a time when many are losing their faith in the face of the war to end all wars.

A light pencil to speed things marginally and add a dash of magic would be useful; but overall this is a solid script that unlike its central character falls short of brilliance and settles for good.

POTENTIAL:

If the production is as capable as the script, this should engage educated global audiences.