★★★☆

The Man Who Knew Infinity is at times so familiar, yet so removed from any biography that has come before it.

It follows in the footsteps of A Beautiful Mind and The Imitation Game, bearing the marks of the mathematical genius bio genre with its arrogantly brilliant protagonist. However, it strays from the lot with its unique formula of an underdog migrant and his autodidacticism.

Based on the short, phenomenal life of Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (Dev Patel), The Man Who Knew Infinity reads as though it belongs to the realm of fantasy realism. Ramanujan has no right to be as fundamental as he is to modern mathematics, yet it’s as though the gods speak numbers to him. Having grown up on the streets of Madras, India, Ramanujan might be untrained, but he understands the language of mathematics like no-one else in his time.

He lives it. He breathes it. He is consumed by it. In the temple he scrawls numbers on the sandstone. In notebooks, he scribbles formulas that can solve what even the most versed mathematicians have spent years trying to comprehend.

Ultimately, it’s his passion and potential that catches the eye of G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), a renowned English mathematician, who calls him to study and publish at Cambridge.

But while Ramanujan never doubts his work, his untrained eye becomes his strength and his weakness. His lack of tutelage brings about a creativity that Hardy admires, but his unexplained genius brings about scrutiny and jealousy by his peers, which leads Hardy to become his only confidant against a group of educated elitists who refuse to acknowledge his contributions.

There’s little that can go wrong with a cast that brings Patel, Irons and Toby Jones (Littlewood) together and throws Stephen Fry (Sir Francis Spring) in for good measure. And little does, with the biggest disappointment being the inclusion of an insipid love story. It pales in comparison to the mathematical collaboration between Hardy and Ramanujan. It’s something Hardy would later call “the one romantic incident in my life”.

A beautiful story about more than one beautiful mind.

The Man Who Knew Infinityopens in cinemas on Thursday May 5.

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