X-MEN APOCALYPSE REVIEW

This was supposed to be a new beginning, effectively after Wolverine had travelled back in time to change the course of events in Days of Future Past. So, this was one movie that had evoked more curiosity than any of the other recent superhero movie; it was the X-Men story being rewritten all over again. We are taken to a point, about 8 years after the point where Days of Future Past left off. Professor is running his school, mutants in the outside world are still having a tough time, Magneto has been unheard of since the last event, Raven is out there somewhere.

Into this mix arrives the first mutant ever born, who has slept through the ages. He wants the world to

be ‘better’, to belong to the ‘strong’, and you know the Professor does not like anything that involves destruction, and neither do any of the people at his school. So, we return to a familiar premise, mutants separated by ideology going against each other. One side is headed by the Professor as always, but the other, more radical side, is not led by Magneto but by a greater mutant.

X-Men Apocalypse starts off slow after the pretty well made pre-title portion about the first ever mutant and the pains taken to keep him safe through the ages. We are shown Raven in the wilderness doing her bit to keep mutants safe, we are shown the Professor who is doing his good work with kids with the same optimism, and we are shown Magneto who is doing a normal day job as just anyone else. But great power cannot be hidden for too long as Magneto finds out, and his faith in humanity is shaken again. It might be a bit of a spoiler, but one cannot help say that the portion is way too similar to the fate Wolverine had to face in the Origins movie. Much of the first hour, even more, is spent on showing how the two sides get together. The great mutant gets his four horsemen together and the Professor is gathering his people, they both know that a confrontation is not far off. Even we know that, but it does take a mighty long time coming.

Quite a lot of time is taken up in the ‘recruitment’ process as the great mutant imbues his horsemen with amazing powers. That process just takes a lot of time and by the time we get to Auschwitz to harness all the rage that was suffered by Eric aka Magneto, we are tired, even through the scene where the concentration camp is blown to pieces, which must have been supposed to be a breath taking spectacle. For an X-Men movie, Apocalypse has too few confrontations, in fact there are just two, the rest is just dreary drama, which really doesn’t excite. The only other time we are excited is during the superfast movements of Quicksilver during a blast. Otherwise we are left to hear about the great ambitions of Apocalypse, the troubled mind of Jean, the grieving of Magneto and diplomacy of Professor. There are good moments in between, like the Moira McTaggort scene, but they are few and far in between.

By the time all the mutants gather in one place for the final face off, the audience is slightly

disinterested, and the movie has an uphill task of providing a climax that is worth the wait. Try as they may, it just doesn’t reach that level. The final confrontation is not anything that we have not seen before, again the most enjoyable moment here comes courtesy Quicksilver’s speed.

In the midst of all this the script manages to find time for Colonel Stryker to appear and where Stryker appears we know who else will. That is the biggest moment of the film, the Wolverine moment. Every X-Men fan loves when the Wolverine arrives and it never fails to excite us, but it is too small to lift the overall mood of the film.

In spite of the overall slow nature of the script, a first hour that just doesn’t let anything happen, X-Men Apocalypse sets a good premise for the new X-Men story to move forward. Michael Fassebender’s intensity as Magneto, James Mc Avoy’s finesse as Professor and the reliable Jennifer Lawrence as Raven keep Apocalypse watchable. And don’t miss the post-credit part, which give us a clue about how Wolverine might go forward.

Slow, meandering, but watchable!

2.5/5

  

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY REVIEW

Is being a genius a pain or a blessing? That, a regular mind would never know. To function on a plane that none of your contemporaries are able to comprehend must sound like a thrill, but the frustration of having to explain yourself every time because the others simply cannot understand what you are up to is a pain. You know you are right, you don’t have the patience to prove yourself, in fact you don’t feel the need to prove yourself, but the structures of academia will throw you out if you can’t prove what you say. You are a racehorse, being bridled and burdened like a workhorse, to prove that you indeed are a genius as you say.  The story of Srinivasa Ramanujan is one such; a man who was so far ahead of his times, much like a Galileo, that he was almost never understood.

The Man Who knew Infinity traces the journey of Srinivasa Ramanujan from Madras (derived from

Mandarajya – literally translated to The Land of Fools, as said in the movie) to Cambridge amongst the most esteemed scholars of the world. This is not just the story of Ramanujan, it is also the story of Professor G H Hardy and perhaps also the story of Cambridge and its elite systems of education, and how one man from obscurity was able to challenge all structures, not by arrogance or statesmanship or diplomacy or charm, but just by sheer brilliance.

The movie begins when Ramanujan is already married, has already ‘invented himself’ (as said in the movie) as a mathematician who can see patterns in anything. He has no education to speak of, only an inexplicable brilliance with numbers which most people cannot see, not because they do not want to, but because it is just too far above them. It requires someone who can speak the same language, the language of numbers, to understand the humongous potential of what Ramanujan has in his notebooks. G.H. Hardy was that man. He thought he had discovered someone rare, someone special, someone too important to be left aside because the Lords at Cambridge thought that bringing an Indian student with no formal education was an unnecessary indulgence.

No time is wasted in explaining much of Ramanujan’s initial struggles for recognition in Madras. Very soon, we are at Cambridge, gazing at the apple tree under which Newton sat. Once there he discovers that what he has come for and what Hardy wants are very different. Ramanujan thinks that all his work has already been done in his notebooks, and just needs to be published, but Hardy thinks otherwise. He wants Ramanujan to conform to the strictures of academia, to produce proofs so that the ground breaking work is not rejected for want of adequate explanation. Not being bred in an academic surrounding makes this change frustrating for Ramanujan who just sees the solution without feeling it necessary to explain the way. This clash of methods, of ideologies, is the central conflict of The Man who Knew Infinity. There are other conflicts, like the one Ramanujan’s young wife fights with her mother-in-law, a silent fight of tears and grief, the conflict that Hardy has to wage with some of his peers and bosses at Cambridge trying to  defend Ramanujan, the conflict that Ramanujan has to face as an outsider in an English campus in the colonial era, the First World War and, of course, Ramanujan’s conflict with his own health.

With so many issues to portray, the writers might have been in a quandary about where to put the

weight in without leaving out anything. Their vision is very clear, they want to show the work done by Ramanujan and Hardy first, everything else next, and there lies the weight of the script. Every scene where Ramanujan and Hardy argue, sometimes softly, sometimes violently is special. You can feel the friction, but greater than that is the passion to create something spectacular. That passion is so beautifully depicted in the scene where Hardy takes Ramanujan to show the enshrined status of Newton’s Principa Mathematica, and says that he belongs there, only if he can take the path to get there. The best scene of the movie for me. That Ramanujan finally comes around and understands the importance of the rigor that Hardy so desperately wants, is as much a tribute to Hardy as it is to Ramanujan. Hardy, as said in the film, ‘discovered Ramanujan’.

The best thing about The Man who knew Infinity is the absolute unidirectional purpose of its writing, never wavering, while portraying all aspects of Ramanujan’s time in the UK. Maybe perhaps a little more about his struggles for vegetarian food would have made his challenges more obvious to the audience. The dialogues are delightful at many places, like the letter written by Littlewood, played with perfect understatement by Toby Jones, to Hardy, or Hardy’s address to the council defending his plea for an FRS in favor of Ramanujan. Pure mathematics, an art unto itself, understood only by a few, and thankfully the film does not try to force any mathematical concepts to the audience, except for a very simple explanation of partitions.

Dev Patel grows on you as Ramanujan, and looks settled in the UK portion of the movie. But one still

wonders how it would have been to have an Indian actor portray Ramanujan and how his English would have sounded in Cambridge in 1914. Dev Patel’s English looks too polished (maybe deliberately so for international audiences) for a Tamil Brahmin of 1914 with no degree. The movie though belongs to Jeremy Irons who hits the nail on the head as G H Hardy, a masterclass performance, especially when he realizes that he could be Ramanujan’s friend.

The Man who Knew Infinity is an exquisite piece of cinema, along the lines of The Imitation Game or even Pawn Sacrifice, that shows us of the peculiar ways in which genius works, their struggles to get along with normal people who just don’t understand them and the importance of a guiding had that shows them the way to pinnacle of their promise. Maybe cruelly cut short in life, but Ramanujan’s legacy lives on in the same hall that houses the legacy of Sir Isaac Newton.

Perfectly told tale of incomprehensible genius!

4/5