The Man Who Knew Infinity

This well-meaning biopic is about a lowly Indian clerk who is a self-taught math genius who, at the beginning of the last century, claimed he could "give meaning to negative values of the gamma function," a major feat that had baffled the most learned British professors for decades. Despite its promising premise, though, the film does not add up to much.

It is based on the true story of Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), who is practically living rough in Madras but has somehow managed to work out complicated mathematical formulae without any formal education at all. A senior colleague at work persuades their boss, the very colonial British civil engineer Sir Francis Spring (Stephen Fry), of the importance of Ramanjan's work. This leads to introductions to Cambridge University Professors in the UK.

One of these is the very famous theorist GH Hardy (Jeremy Irons), who initially thinks that the letter from Ramanjan is a hoax. When he accepts that it is real, and realizes that he may have a genuine genius on his hands, he pays for the 25-year-old Indian to leave home and come to study at the University. Ramanjan is desperate for his work to be published, but Hardy, egged on by his disbelieving colleagues, insists that Ramanjan follow scholastic traditions and provide the proofs of all his work before this can happen.

The university and all its inhabitants, with barely two exceptions, is steeped in institutionalized racism, which is hurled verbally and physically at Ramanjan. Both the validity of his work and his very presence on the campus are called into question. When, a few months later, World War I breaks out, the xenophobia gets even worse, and a dejected Ramanjan -- now ill with TB -- just wants to give up and go home.

The relationship between him and confirmed bachelor Hardy is much better, but nevertheless an odd one. The older man is reluctant to stand up to his own convictions that Ramanjan is the real thing until it is almost too late. His hesitation, however, like his colleagues' bigotry, is based on his complete inability to have any sort of personal relationship of any kind, as he spends his whole life completely emerged in mathematics.

Patel, an affable actor who was well suited to his roles in "Slumdog Millionaire" and the "Exotic Marigold Hotel" movies, is completely out of his depth here, and totally fails in his attempt to portray an earnest scholastic genius. In fact, the only actor to fare well out of this rather disappointing drama is Irons, as the conflicted Cambridge Don who comes good in the end.

With no real attempt to explain how this clerk came to possess such a remarkable talent, or any serious endeavor on the part of the filmmakers to enlighten us about a subject matter that is about as exciting to most people as watching paint dry, the movie falls really flat.