Thompson on Hollywood
By Meredith Brody | Thompson on Hollywood
September 19, 2015 at 4:42PM
Sometimes good movies come in unshowy packages.
EXCERPT…..
I knew nothing about "The Man Who Knew Infinity" before I saw it (one of the privileges of no longer reading the trades), and its director, Matthew Brown, was an unknown quantity -- I'd never heard of his previous film, "Ropewalk," made in 2000. I'm also a mathematics idiot, and "The Man Who Knew Infinity" is about a young Indian prodigy whose higher mathematical theories somehow propelled him from poverty in Madras to the height of philosophical academia in Cambridge before and after WWI. (Yes, another costume drama -- and, like "Spotlight," "based on a true story.")
"The Man Who Knew Infinity" was perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the festival for me (along with a three-hour-and-twenty-minute documentary about a group of 70s artists and filmmakers in Cali, Colombia, called "It All Started at the End." But that's another -- upcoming -- story). The main performances, by an earnest Dev Patel and a resonant Jeremy Irons, were compelling and satisfyingly intertwined. As with "Spotlight," they were accompanied by welcome supporting players, notably Toby Jones, Jeremy Northam, Stephen Fry, and an array of English character actors with wonderful faces and voices.
Cambridge, as Toby Jones says to Dev Patel when its beautiful grey-stoned buildings and velvety lawns are revealed to him, has its desired effect. The script kept me, the aforementioned math idiot, sufficiently in the picture to understand the difference between a theory and its proofs, and caring about the recognition of this unknown and prickly Indian and his famous and prickly mentor. Especially in this moment, a hundred years after its setting, the story of immigration and the racism, both casual and specific, that greets Patel in England, even intellectual England, resonates. (Interestingly -- at least to me! -- this is the only movie of these four that fails the Bechdel test: that two women in a movie talk to each other about something other than a man. The mother and wife of Dev Patel's character are skillfully sketched, but their conversations are indeed only about him.)
"The Man Who Knew Infinity" kept me entertained and interested right through its (inevitable) ending crawl, telling what happened to its protagonists (along with actual period photographs of them, a trope I find satisfying) after the events of the movie. It turns out I like a well-made crawl that follows a well-made movie. It turns out I like a varied movie diet, with movies that satisfy as well as challenge.
A few days later I ran into the estimable and intelligent Scott Foundas, late of the Society of Lincoln Center and Variety, and told him I was writing a piece called In Defense of the Conventional Movie. "Ah, then you liked 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'!" he said. "Yes!!"
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
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