The Man Who Knew Infinity, a heart-wrenching biopic starring Dev Patel as mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, arrives in theatres on Thursday in the UAE after premiering at Dubai International Film Festival last year.
Based on the Robert Kanigel novel of the same name, the film tells the story of Ramanujan, a devout Hindu and certifiable genius from Madras, India (now Chennai), who made his mark in the field of pure mathematics in the early 1900s, and G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), the atheist theorist in England who is both stumped and exhilarated by his discoveries.
Good Will Hunting (1997) was where Matthew Brown, the director and screenwriter of Infinity, first heard of Ramanujan, in a scene where Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) tells Sean Maguire (the late Robin Williams) that he’s found someone like Ramanujan. This, of course, turns out to be Hunting (Matt Damon).
“I love Good Will Hunting, I totally enjoyed it, but it is kind of the white person story of Ramanujan. It’s no small point of pride that we were able to actually tell his story,” Brown told tabloid! back in December. “It was pretty much [against] all odds, because I’d never done a film that anybody had ever heard of before, and trying to get financing for this kind of a story about a mathematician, let alone an Indian mathematician, it was very difficult.”
The film shot in both India and England, and became the first to film at Trinity College in Cambridge, where Ramanujan and Hardy’s bond had developed.
“I was told at one some point by some financier along the way: ‘Can’t you just make a love story with a nurse at Trinity? With a white nurse? And we could stick in some big English movie star.’ It’s like, ‘ No! We can’t do that.’ It’s missing the point. I wish it wasn’t so hard to make these kinds of movies. I wish people were more open.”
At a time when whitewashing of Asian characters has become commonplace in Hollywood, and Oscar nominations have excluded enough people of colour to prompt an #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, The Man Who Knew Infinity might prove a breath of fresh air.
Brown spoke about the hardships of funding the decade-long project, and how Irons and Patel’s palpable chemistry came to be.
Can you take us to the beginning and how you got attached to the project? When did it start?
I know it was 2004, because the Red Sox were winning the World Series. That’s when I met with Robert Kanigel, I think during the parade for the Red Sox victory, because I’m from Boston.
I like that that’s how you measure time.
It’s pretty much between Red Sox games! It was weird, because I was in Big Sur, visiting my aunt up in like hippieville Northern California, and I got the book. I started to mull it over, and sort of fell in love with the story, the human elements, all the different aspects of it, and I had to go back and meet with Robert Kanigel to convince him to let me do it. I grew up in Boston, and my dad’s a doctor there, they’re all in the same academic, weird world. I had to go over to MIT and sit down at the Starbucks with Robert — and he denies that he grilled me. He grilled for about three hours. All I could think during it was, “at least Dad’s apartment is around the corner and I can go walk home and like, escape.” That’s when it all started — I probably never knew the story as well as I did then, because I read the book two times in preparation for Robert. He’s an MIT professor, which is kind of daunting to have to sit down with.
Why did he grill you? What did he need to know before he said yes to this?
He wanted to know that I did my homework, for one. I think he just wanted to see that he could trust me — that I would honour the project.
That was in 2004, so that’s about 11 years ago [in 2015, during Diff]. How long did you actually film for?
Oh, none of it. It’s only been the last year and a half of dealing with actually filmmaking on the film, which is absurd. We thought it would be made on about three different occasions, and we were really close at one point. It broke my heart a couple of different times … It’s been such a big part of my life for so long.
Can you tell me about the casting of Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons?
Dev, because it was so long [in the making], he was too young in the beginning, he was a child. I knew that I wanted somebody young for the role, and I like the father-son dynamic a lot. You know, mentor-student. His manager might have found [the script], or Sofia Sondervan, one of the producers, might have sent it. But we met and we hit it off pretty good — we developed some trust over a couple of months, tweaking the script. He had notes and I had notes. During that time, I think [agent] Fred Specktor gave the script to Jeremy Irons, his client, and Jeremy just loved it.
What kind of relationship did they have on screen? Did they bring something that surprised you?
I was surprised constantly by them. They’re just fine actors. Jeremy is on another planet from anybody else. Dev is really instinctual — a really fine dramatic actor, and I think people need to see more and more of him proving that. When they were together, I knew [from] day one, first minute, there was going to be incredible chemistry, and there was. They kept it under the surface. It was kind of a beautiful thing. I was smart enough to stay out of their way a lot of the time, which was good.
Their chemistry is very subtle and not too cloying …
One of my favourite movies was Remains of the Day, and it’s all underneath the surface with Anthony Hopkins in that one. I remember talking about that, I was like, ‘This has got to be under the surface.’ Jeremy one time said, ‘It’s better to see someone struggling not to cry, than to cry.’
There were definitely tears in the theatre. Was it an emotional film to make, or was it more of a clinical set?
It was emotional. There were times — I mean, I saw Larry Smith, the cinematographer, he was crying during a scene. It was a battle. I’ve never been through anything in my life that was harder work. We didn’t have enough money, we didn’t have enough time, and it’s a constant fight to get it [made]. It’s funny, because you have these moments in your life, when you’re realising something is going to slip away or it’s going to be compromised, and you have to fight for it … It was worth it. Because if I hadn’t [fought for it], it wouldn’t have been half the film I think it [is]. And we still didn’t do what I wanted to do with the film — you always want to do more.
What was the ‘more’?
I would have loved to have done more visually with it, get inside of his head more, do stuff visually that I had intended to do in the script stage with it. Larry said, [and] it was good advice, ‘You need to make sure that you get the story that we all fell in love with told before you start anything else.’
You shot in India and in England.
We were really blessed, because there’s never been a film to shoot at Trinity, so we were the first film to be granted access by the college, and that was a huge honour. Honestly, it brought tears to my eyes this one day, because the junior bursar called us all into the room and was like, ‘We’re giving you this opportunity, don’t let us down.’ Chariots of Fire didn’t get to shoot there, so it was a big deal … They wouldn’t let us shoot at Wren Library. People were complaining, and I was like, ‘No, no, no, it’s OK, I’m not going to be the one to burn down Wren Library, it’s fine.’ Then Oxford let us shoot. It’s kind of funny because we shoot Oxford for Trinity.
Where did you shoot in India?
We shot in Chennai, Pondicherry, and Kumbakonam. That was interesting too, because we were trying to find an authentic Brahmin house street, and we couldn’t find one to duplicate Triplicane, which was that section of Madras in the period [depicted]. So we wound up having to go to Ramanujan’s hometown, six hours away down the most harrowing road you’ll ever go down in your entire life, and we found a street in his hometown to use as Madras, and we shot it there.
A lot of filmmakers wouldn’t go through the trouble of going to India and filming an authentic scene, they would just rebuild it in a studio somewhere. Why was it important to do it the way you did?
I grew up doing independent film, working on other people’s films. I was in New York in the ’90s and it was all about, ‘Let’s just make films, drop out of film school and go make a movie.’ You shoot everything on location because you don’t have money for studios. What you realise is that it brings so much to the actors … There was a night we were shooting at Trinity, outside of Wren Library, and it was all lit up beautifully by Larry. We had the hospital tents there and soldiers lying wounded and everyone in costume. It was eerie, because it was on the anniversary of the war starting — this was where those people laid dying. There’s no way not to feel it, and I’m not [even] an actor. That’s the joy of shooting on location. The hard part is that we’re shooting in Chennai, and fireworks are going off while we’re trying to do an emotional scene on a balcony. It’s insane.