The Amazing Journey of Dev Patel

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Written and directed by Matthew Brown, The Man Who Knew Infinity is the true story of friendship that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), a self-taught Indian mathematics genius, traveled to Trinity College, Cambridge, where over the course of five years, forged a bond with his mentor, the brilliant and eccentric professor, G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), and fought against prejudice to reveal his mathematic genius to the world.

Making a movie that centers on theoretical mathematics is hard enough, but Brown had the equally hard decision of casting his two leads for his picture. He knew it would be necessary to find an accomplished Indian actor with some worldwide audience appeal to portray Ramanujan, and the name that was foremost in his mind was Dev Patel, who had achieved acclaim for his roles in the Academy Award® winning Slumdog Millionaire and the global hit The Exotic Marigold Hotel. “To succeed in bringing Ramanujan to life, I needed someone who the audience could relate to and feel empathy for,” says Brown. “I knew from my very first meeting with Dev that his natural charisma, empathy and unbelievable instincts would jump off the screen.”

Patel didn’t hesitate to accept the part one the offer came his way. “I wanted to do the role because it is rare for an actor who looks like I do to come across something that is so meaty, and I knew the film would attract stellar artists who I’d get to act opposite,” he said. “When a film does not rely on CGI or special effects, it’s performance driven, and I thought a story about two humans with drastically different ideals would be an amazing journey to go on and it turned out to be just that.”

Ramanujan, Patel explained,  was a character plucked out of obscurity in the middle of India and brought across the water to Trinity College, Cambridge, one of Britain’s greatest institutions, where he worked alongside the great mathematician, G.H. Hardy who is played by Jeremy Irons. Ramanujan was very religious and thought mathematics was like painting without colors; he believed every equation was an expression of God. Hardy, on the other hand, was an atheist and believed in the practical way of doing proofs to explain theorems and this is what he tried to instill in Ramanujan.

Although the real life character often battled each other on the correct way to mathematically define the world, Patel said he had o such trouble with it came to collaborating with Jeremy Irons. “It’s a dream for any young actor, and he was everything I expected and more,” he said. “He has a wonderful sense of humor and is so generous. The teacher/ student role came very naturally, and Jeremy created a space that allowed me to take big risks and be confident. He’s an incredibly thoughtful human being and that translates to his acting style. He’s all about the nuances—everything had to be just right on set. If it was winter outside, then there had to be gloves and an umbrella on the seat, and if we had done a ton of mathematics on the board it had to be dirty. It allowed us to really immerse ourselves into the environment almost as if we were sucked into a time warp. It was amazing.”

Like playing tennis with an opponent who is better and more experienced than you are, Patel aid that working with Irons allowed him to take risks with his performance in the film, risks that paid off for him on many different levels.

“Playing Ramanujan was very instinctual for me. I read certain passages from the book, and though there is no footage of him, there are a couple of pictures we had for reference. He was physically very different than me—he was rather portly—and he was a very nervous human being. While I embodied the obvious “fish out of water” feeling [at Trinity], to make things more dramatic and to work within the realm that we were telling the story,” Patel said. “I had a lot more freedom than just mimicking some found footage. I knew his background, but it was really about going on the journey within the script and fully committing to what was on the page. Everything is pretty much there so I understood where he began and where he ended.”