Infinity is not a masterpiece nor even great cinema (but do we hold it on account of that?), but it does have something that I really loved about it. I adore Richard Feynman, he being my favourite scientist and one of my two heroes (the other being Itzhak Perlman) to really try to aspire to be everything I can be. I think everyone should read his books (even his Physics lectures, even if you hate Physics. He makes everything worthwhile). Onto the film... The film starts out with the sweet, gentle relationship between father and son, taking direct quotes from Feynman's own novels (he actually didn't write them; they are accounted stories) Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! and What Do YOU Care What Other People Think? and letters and such. It progresses through Richard's days in high school, to meeting Arline (that is the correct spelling) onto MIT and Princeton (pre Los Alamos). During this, my biggest complaint would be that the film moved way too fast. There were some lines ("Look I'm gorgeous") that were just beginning to show Feynman's character and his way with humour, but it plowed right through them onto the next scene. I think Broderick was so intent on keeping everything to the book, he forgot some very vital elements of what made "Richard Feynman" Richard Feynman. What really grasped Feynman's character was when the film steered into the direction of Feynman's days at Los Alamos (working on "the bomb") and Arline was at the sanatorium. The film showed just how much fun Arline had with Feynman and vice versa (I loved that the film included Feynman's birthday present from Arline!). It also showed the tenderness, yet sometimes almost "absent" love of Feynman. In Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Tack: the letters of Richard Feynman, he writes a letter to Arline before she dies telling her how he wished he would have been there for her more, loved her more, etc. I think the film really captures that, even before the book was published, Broderick had a sense of what Feynman was going through. He didn't really know how to handle his wife dying. Lastly, I loved how they implement Feynman's love of "drumming". It really didn't become an obsession until much later (when he went to Brazil after Arline's death), but the film shows the beginnings of a love that Feynman would love until his death (a number of his friends joked that he was going to spend his Nobel earnings on a new bongo drum). There were flashes of the Feynman people know and love, but it didn't really hold true at the beginning. One thing that seemed confusing was a brief snipet involving Broderick as Feynman hearing about a "baby". This is most likely in reference to a pregnancy scare that took place when Arline was in the sanatorium. They thought they'd have to abort the baby, but it turned out she was pregnant and that she was just malnourished because of her illness. They didn't explain that very well though. Next they need to make a film about his marriage to Gweneth and his later years winning the Nobel and working on the Challenger. Even though I don't act, I could play Gweneth! hahaha, yeah right.
Review of Infinity
