The Mystique That Was Srinivasa Ramanujan

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By Raj S. Rangarajan *

Film Review

Most of our readers would have heard of or read about Srinivasa Ramanujan, the math genius who lived in early 20th century. Some of you would have also read Robert Kanigel’s 1991 book – The Man Who Knew Infinity – that was followed in the making of the film with the same name. 

As the story goes, in 1913, a young Indian clerk wrote a letter to well-known British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy if the latter would be interested in reviewing former’s original mathematical works. Ramanujan had documented his work with formulas, and realizing that the young man’s work was perhaps significant, Hardy, then a professor at Trinity College in Cambridge arranged for Ramanujan to come to England. 

Kanigel, describes lucidly, “the temples and slums of Madras as also the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, ‘the Prince of Intuition’ tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, ‘the Apostle of Proof’." 

Directed by Matthew Brown and shot in South India, where Ramanujan grew up and in Cambridge, U.K. where the twenty-plus clerk from the Madras Port Trust, propounded his theses, the bio-pic is a feel-good film. More so, if you are of South Asian (read Indian) origin.

Commendable performances from Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) who plays Ramanujan and Jeremy Irons (Prof. G.H. Hardy), who trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England highlight the 114-minute film. Ramanujan worked as a clerk under Sir Francis Spring, played by Stephen Fry (who played Jeeves in P.G. Wodehouse’s novels).

Brown says, for the first time, the celebrated Trinity College allowed them to shoot on their campus, and among the scenes was Hardy with his ubiquitous umbrella open, and Ramanujan arguing as to why proofs were really needed. Hardy was superstitious in that if he had the umbrella open, it would not rain. 

In an odd way, the story is an accident of history in that while the Indian and the Brit had an obsessive, insatiable love for numbers, they were not alike. Ramanujan was a god-fearing Hindu Iyengar Brahmin who believed that all that he knew was thanks to his goddess, “Namagiri Thayar” in the town of Namakkal in South India. He had boldly declared, “an equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God”. This belief was at variance from pipe-sporting Englishman Hardy’s who was proud of being an atheist.

The family setting in Kumbakonam was fairly authentic with Janaki (Devika Bhise – Queensbee) playing a subdued role, overseen by a domineering mother-in-law (Arundhati Nag, actor, director), clad in a nine-yard sari – normally draped by traditional Iyengar women. As a doting mother to Ramanujan, Komalatammal felt, her son needed all the concentration and meaningful time at Trinity College to complete his work. She hid Janaki’s letters to her husband: letters that had to be mailed to Cambridge. With no communications from Ramanujan ever, young Janaki decides to go back to her parents. There is no empathy from the mother-in-law.

According to M.N. Krish’s novel, The Steradian Trail: Book #0 of The Infinity Cycle – cited in Scroll.in, Ramanujan’s wife Janaki-ammal, has said: “After he came back with the disease, he would say that if I had been able to go and take care of him he would not have fallen sick. He used to regret not taking me with him to England.”

In the film that emphasizes intellect, cinematographer Larry Smith has captured its essence admirably while accentuating that period’s sartorial costumes in England and in South India. Luciana Arrighi, who won an Oscar for Best Art Director in film Howards End) and costume designer Ann Maskrey (Dangerous Liaisons) have done ample justice to their craft. 

John E. Littlewood (played by Toby Jones), contemporary of Hardy’s and famed philosopher Bertrand Russell (played by Jeremy Northam), says, with light-hearted humor that every positive integer was a personal friend of Ramanujan’s.

The film covers a period around World War I when the clerk and the professor became friends in a common pursuit: feverishly cracking numbers at a time when bigotry and racism was benignly normal.

Hardy, has said in “A Mathematician’s Apology,” published in 1940, “I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729”. But the film version shows Hardy bidding goodbye to Ramanujan at the pier as the newly-minted F.R.S. leaves for India. Looking at the cab, Hardy says: “The number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen.” Responded Ramanujan, "Actually, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

Their relationship is touching and caring. When the frail protégé is seen ailing in a hospital bed, Hardy counsels him poignantly like an affectionate father would. Ever the hard-nosed realist Hardy asserted: “we all need proofs, not merely final answers.”

Director Brown says, “it took more than six hours to travel to Kumbakonam (from Chennai) to shoot the rural scenes, and more than 12 years to make the film. Even the research for making the film was daunting”. Through Facebook, he could locate “a grand-nephew of Ramanujan’s for fact-checking”.

* Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based independent writer. He covers trend stories on art, reviews films and books for media based in New York; Toronto, Canada; and India. He can be reached at raj.rangarajan@gmail.com