There is a moment early on in this agreeable study of a remarkable relationship – among the most important in all mathematics – when we learn for certain that the film-makers will not be skirting highbrow territory.
JE Littlewood (played well by Toby Jones) is introducing fellow mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel) to Trinity College, Cambridge. He points to a tree. No, don’t do it, Littlewood! Yes, he’s telling him about Newton and the apocryphal apple. We are, it seems, at home to the tourist-bus approach to the history of mathematics.
Oh well. We should be pleased that The Man Who Knew Infinity exists at all. In the early part of the last century, Ramanujan, a poor autodidact from Madras, came to an astonishing series of conclusions in the fields of number theory, mathematical analysis and infinite series. The film confirms the legend that the theorems emerged from a fecund collaboration with GH Hardy (Jeremy Irons in archetypal posh-duffer mode). Ramanujan seemed to pluck his brilliant ideas from the air. Hardy pressed towards rigour and proof.
Patel, an actor who bubbles with physical energy and raw joy, is miscast as a cerebral oddball tortured by cultural dissonance (the English cold, the English food, the English stares). We are allowed only one brief explanation of one small corner of his mathematics. Everything leads towards a crudely staged penultimate triumph. Still, enough of the extraordinary true story remains to render this nicely shot film defiantly irresistible. It's the Eddie the Eagle of higher mathematics. QED.
