User Reviews

**A review for those who have already watched the movie**

There are a lot of great stories to be told; I often wonder why so many have not been. A swordsman who wins over 100 duels in his life, his first beginning at the age of 13, and by his twenties maintains the handicap of using a wooden blade. Yet the tale of Miyomoto Musashi is one that I have not seen put to film. The world is full of people who tell us what we can not know, yet whether or not they are as wise as they may believe themselves, I have yet to see anyone argue another's ignorance as convincingly or as wittily as Socrates (and with a crucial difference, by first asking what they know, and actually listening to how they think they know it) -- or for as noble a purpose. So when I found that a movie had been made about one of my heroes, I was very eager to see what it amounted to.

I assume that either Matthew Broderick or his mother (or both) who wrote the screen play, must also have been a fan of Feynman. I wouldn't suppose to know everything about Feynman, but I have made an effort to learn everything that I could. I have read his books, looked through his Wikipedia and looked at just about everything I could track down that had anything to do with him.

For me, as a physics student, the appeal of Feynman is mistranslated in the movie. He of course, was no ordinary genius, but how he accomplished what he did was as important (to the "niche" audience) as what he did, and the how seemed to be missing. Feynman developed his capacity for mental math during the Manhattan project via competition with Hans Bethe, and the development is key. The abacus scene was terrible for several reasons, some of them outlined in other reviews, chiefly for misrepresenting Feynman's personality. However the scene also sold out the accessibility of intelligence as something unique to certain individuals, that this was something 'natural' to Feynman. Feynman's IQ was measured at 125, which is supposed to be 15 points below the average PhD. Now, I'm not going to argue about the validity of IQ testing, one of the major personality traits the film wasn't able to touch on was of Feynman's insistence that people were incapable of measuring the aptitude of others' with tests. This "low" score however, was what is truly inspiring about Richard Feynman, that he never claimed to be more than a normal man. All his ability came from work driven by passion and love. Feynman wasn't a Japanese 4 year old who could speak 5 languages and solve Rubick's cubes blindfolded in 7 seconds. He was a lover of life and of learning, and it was his passion that motivated him to work hard, and his love that drove him to never give up and believe he could accomplish anything anyone else could. The real lesson of Feynman is that anyone can reach for greatness, and with drive and effort and luck attain it too. The Feynman story is one that allows us all to believe in ourselves, not one that should make us feel intimidated or insignificant. When Feynman can beat the abacus man at 18 with no background story of how his abilities came to be, it is far less inspiring.

The performances were satisfying, but the story development seemed rushed, especially in the beginning. There was plenty of room for drama in the competition for Arlene with Feynman's old "friend" Howard without the need to throw in so many anecdotes that disrupt his life's true time line.

I think that if you go through the books Feynman wrote only once, you miss how truly stressed Arlene's diminishing health made him. He was in many ways a subtle man, and private. When Feynman writes, I feel like he blindsides his readers from ever detecting how much he was hiding from them, with the sheer vulnerability he subjects himself to with his honesty. You can't see what hes not saying because he has already surprised you with the courage to say so much more than most people will admit to. To know how he was really feeling I think requires reading between the lines. When Feynman sees the dress, it is a total breakdown, it is overwhelming. In everything Feynman ever wrote, that was the only time he ever confessed "it was too much." I can hardly think of the scene depicted in his books without coming to tears, even now. The story of he and Arlene really is, as another reviewer put it, one of the greatest real love stories I have ever heard of.

I don't know much about movies, and I understand there are limitations. You can't fit everything into 90 minutes and "the book is always better." I would be curious to hear Mr. Broderick explain why he went the way he did with certain aspects of the film. I certainly couldn't comment on whether writing, acting, and directing simultaneously would have been too much. If the film gets anyone to go and look up Richard Feynman, I think it will have served its purpose.

This movie is a major disappointment to me. I looked forward to it after listening to many of Richard Feynman's Physics lectures. While doing a great job of showing the love between these two people, it totally misses out on showing Richard as a person unto himself. He is so unique that this is a massive oversight, to say the least. Despite his tragedy, I am sure he was just as irreverent and humorous during the Manhattan project as he was for the rest of his life. Yet only a couple of snippets show this irreverence and humor and even those are done badly. One is the repetitive exiting of the Los Alamos site to demonstrate the lousy security they had despite rigorous examination of everyone entering the site. The other was when he first met with the students in the data processing lab. That one too was far below what I'm sure the real Richard Feynman would have done, judging by how he treated his students in almost all of the lectures I have listened to.

So Broderick took a whole person and cut him in half, only showing the intimate portion of his life and relationship with his wife that he loved so dearly. He almost completely left out the public persona of the man and this hurts the movie so badly that it never really recovers from it. It makes it a poor movie when it could have been a great movie, right up there with A Beautiful Mind. That is why I rated it a 3 instead of an 8 or 9 like it could have been.

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.

This takes you through the early life of Feynman to the end of the Manhattan project and the death of his wife from tuberculosis. One will note the irony that she died of the disease only a very few years before antibiotics could have saved her. The love story of man and wife is tenderly told and nicely photographed against various backgrounds including Bandolier Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico, near Los Alamos. The actual scientific work of Feynman and the others is referred to obliquely for the most part, sometimes in conversations between the couple. Critics have properly complained of the choppy editing and a tendency to wander off the subject into irrelevancies. But still, it's a lovely film about the sad, and busy, early life of a great physicist.

I'm at odds with this film. I first launched myself into physics because of the books that feynman wrote (well, spoke) and i received the full set of the feynman lectures before i started college.

Matthew Broderick has always been one of my favorite actors. I liked his nerdiness and i could relate. So he was one of my reasons for deciding to branch off from physics and start a film career.

In the end, though, i see why i always have a little regret for not sticking with physics. Film could never fully realize what it means to be in love with science. I understand that Feynman loved his wife, but he loved everything, that's what made her so important, he could never tire of learning to look. just like her.

But this film really doesn't get that across. Plus, instead of relying on smart direction and good editing they give the game away in the opening titles, which are ridiculously lame.

**SPOILER** (please it's a real story go read the book)

The intercut to the parallel line of the Trinity test explosion is a neat idea, but ultimately poorly executed and timed. But i see where they were going. But they missed it. Because the explosion for feynman is when he sees the dress, not when she dies. remember that great advice, you can call it whatever you want in a thousand languages but that doesn't mean you know it. When feynman sees the dress, he *knows* what it means for arlene to die. He can't share with her anymore, that is what her death *is*. and that should have been the point. you've got to learn what a thing is before you can tell someone else. Feynman was a great man, but he had his flaws. However, the number of people he has influenced is incredible. And i'm glad that somebody made a film about him. However, Feynman's clipped style of speech, what made him so unique and distinct, is not available to the viewer and it cheapens it.

I'm sorry to say that i did not like this film. In fact, it made me a little angry to watch it and see my hero stripped of his unique story.