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I was lucky enough to see The Man Who Knew Infinity this past weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And I'd just like to say that it is a tr

I was lucky enough to see The Man Who Knew Infinity this past weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And I'd just like to say that it is a truly beautiful film, and I encourage everyone to go see it. After the showing, there was a panel discussion with the director, composer, producer, two actors (Stephen Fry!), and three consulting mathematicians who helped the production. One of the topics that came up was the recent (finally!) interest in Hollywood for making movies about technical people. Since the dawn of cinema, we've made movies about artists, writers, and poets. But it is only recently that we've started making movies about scientists (Stephen Hawking) and mathematicians (Alan Turing). In my opinion, this movie puts both The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game to shame. It is much more moving and beautiful than both, and it doesn't fall into the either the trap of overly simplifying the math, nor of overly dramatizing his life. If you have any interest in math, science, or computer science (much of which is underpinned by his work in number theory), I highly encourage you to go see this film.

perseusprime11 10y ago
I agree. This is such a great movie. They put a lot of effort in making the math accessible to all.
wil421 10y ago
We have been making films about technical people for a while. A Beautiful Mind comes to mind first I am sure I can find some more. Takedown, and Pirates of Silicon Valley are some others. Funny as I search for more about actual people, a lot of fictional movies were created around the time the dot com bubble burst.
- phasmantistes 10y ago
  A Beautiful Mind isn't as long ago as you think: less than 15 years. In the space of cinema (which was producing films about famous artists at least as early as the '30s) that's not very long. Takedown and Pirates of Silicon Valley are also a bit different: hacking has been part of "pop culture" since the mid 90s at least, and Pirates is a documentary anyway.
boulos 10y ago
Huh. I was at the same showing and didn't care for it much. The movie only rarely touched on the mathematics and instead focused on his life and personal troubles. At least Theory of Everything and Imitation Game actually showed a bit of work happening. The closest we get in this movie is a bit of argument about primes and then a little of his partitions work (at an extremely consumable level, so much so it was boring). I kept thinking "Hmm, I wonder why they felt hiding mathematics and making it a personal biopic was better than getting people interested in the actual math?". In my opinion, Carl Sagan's books remain a much better "popular interest in X" method. Explain things to people, sometimes slowly or incompletely, but avoid the hero worship.
- phasmantistes 10y ago
  You're absolutely right. But the movie is not meant to be a documentary about the math, it is meant to be a story about his life. The same goes for Theory of Everything, Imitation Game, and A Beautiful Mind. The different here is that what math they show is actually correct. I was also disappointed that the discussion afterwards put so much emphasis on him as a person, and not on the actual math, but I don't hold that against the film itself. Movies about artists and authors have never been about their works of art either: the movies are about their lives, and I think it is appropriate for cinema to be used as a medium for biography rather than as a medium for education.

perseusprime11 10y ago

I agree. This is such a great movie. They put a lot of effort in making the math accessible to all.

wil421 10y ago

We have been making films about technical people for a while. A Beautiful Mind comes to mind first I am sure I can find some more. Takedown, and Pirates of Silicon Valley are some others. Funny as I search for more about actual people, a lot of fictional movies were created around the time the dot com bubble burst.

phasmantistes 10y ago
A Beautiful Mind isn't as long ago as you think: less than 15 years. In the space of cinema (which was producing films about famous artists at least as early as the '30s) that's not very long. Takedown and Pirates of Silicon Valley are also a bit different: hacking has been part of "pop culture" since the mid 90s at least, and Pirates is a documentary anyway.

boulos 10y ago

Huh. I was at the same showing and didn't care for it much. The movie only rarely touched on the mathematics and instead focused on his life and personal troubles. At least Theory of Everything and Imitation Game actually showed a bit of work happening. The closest we get in this movie is a bit of argument about primes and then a little of his partitions work (at an extremely consumable level, so much so it was boring). I kept thinking "Hmm, I wonder why they felt hiding mathematics and making it a personal biopic was better than getting people interested in the actual math?". In my opinion, Carl Sagan's books remain a much better "popular interest in X" method. Explain things to people, sometimes slowly or incompletely, but avoid the hero worship.

phasmantistes 10y ago
You're absolutely right. But the movie is not meant to be a documentary about the math, it is meant to be a story about his life. The same goes for Theory of Everything, Imitation Game, and A Beautiful Mind. The different here is that what math they show is actually correct. I was also disappointed that the discussion afterwards put so much emphasis on him as a person, and not on the actual math, but I don't hold that against the film itself. Movies about artists and authors have never been about their works of art either: the movies are about their lives, and I think it is appropriate for cinema to be used as a medium for biography rather than as a medium for education.