This was not a bad movie, although I was annoyed that the actor playing Ramanujan really doesn't look anything like the historical character.
But the movie contains certain narrative formulas that have begun to irritate me a lot in movies about people who are good at math and other sorts of abstract thinking. The main ones are listed below this spoiler-line:
(spoilers below)
- young genius taught a lesson (or mostly so) by older hands
- justification by faith vs. works (end vs. means)
- suddenly the whole thing came to me in a flash
Some of this stuff is actually documented as part of Ramanujan's life and experiences, and the issues are worth talking about when they correspond to real life.
But I'm struggling against over-familiarity with these commonplaces. The 2014 Turing movie “Imitation Game” disturbed me because of these issues — it seems to be thought quite acceptable to present a completely fictional Alan Turing for some reason that I can't understand. It is not acceptable, and I keep meaning to write a about this. But not here.
It's nice to see attention paid to the proper pronunciation of someone's name, and that issue figured in the plot.
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