It's cool to be smart, kiddies. Hollywood seems obsessed with the personal travails of the intellectually gifted lately, making a nice counter-balance to all of the superhero flicks out there. The latest is The Man who Knew Infinity, and it's slightly different than the rest as it centers on Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, a math genius with no formal training of any kind.
The first trailer for the Matthew Brown-directed film has been released, and it stars Dev Patel as Ramanujan, an autodidact who overcame rejection and derision from his peers to become a leader in the field of mathematics. Jeremy Irons plays Cambridge professor G.H. Hardy, who is amazed by Ramanujan's natural gifts. Here's the official synopsis:
Colonial India, 1913. Srinavasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel) is a 25-year-old shipping clerk and self-taught genius, who failed out of college due to his near-obsessive, solitary study of mathematics. Determined to pursue his passion despite rejection and derision from his peers, Ramanujan writes a letter to G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), an eminent British mathematics professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Hardy recognises the originality and brilliance of Ramanujan’s raw talent and despite the skepticism of his colleagues, undertakes bringing him to Cambridge so that his theories can be explored.
There's a lot more to Ramanujan's story that doesn't have much of a role in this trailer, such as the physical ailments that would haunt him throughout his short life, but they may be saving that for later. The film has yet to gain a U.S. release date, while it opens in the U.K. in April.
