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The Man Who Knew Infinity, directed by Matthew Brown, out now in UK cinemas

MATHEMATICIANS often compare their work to exploring an unknown land, tentatively stepping across an opaque world until they reach islands of understanding. For Srinivasa Ramanujan, this was literally true. As an untrained prodigy, he travelled from his home in what was then Madras, India, to the UK to study mathematics at the University of Cambridge, leaving a lasting impression on the field.

Ramanujan鈥檚 journey is the subject of a new film,The Man Who Knew Infinity, based on a book of the same name. Like two other recent biopics, The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game, the film attempts to give us a glimpse of an unknowable mind traversing the realm of abstract thought, while also humanising its subject. And frankly, the formula is starting to wear thin.

Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing were household names, but many people are likely to be encountering Ramanujan鈥檚 story for the first time. Your patience may be tested by slow opening scenes in Madras as Ramanujan (Dev Patel, pictured right) struggles to find someone who can understand his arcane scribbles. The film only gets going once he makes contact with Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons), who recognises his potential and invites him to the UK.

Once there, we see the challenges Ramanujan had to overcome in 1910s England 鈥� the weather, racism and lack of good vegetarian food. The stuck-in-time Trinity College serves as the backdrop, and every clich茅 is played out, from old bicycles to dusty senior common rooms.

鈥淭he film deserves praise for avoiding manic chalkboard scenes and strained analogies鈥�

More interesting is the clash of mathematical cultures. Full of equations, Ramanujan鈥檚 notebooks still lacked the proof demanded by Cambridge dons, and he struggled to understand why such arduous steps were necessary. Ramanujan, it turns out, was a rare genius who could simply intuit mathematical concepts, although he credited his family goddess Namagiri for his ideas and claimed she appeared to him in dreams.

Maybe I鈥檓 overfamiliar with Ramanujan鈥檚 story after reading both The Man Who Knew Infinity and Hardy鈥檚 A Mathematician鈥檚 Apology many times, but I was exasperated that this religious element was held up as the film鈥檚 big reveal when Ramanujan鈥檚 actions already made it obvious that he was a deeply spiritual man.

Or perhaps it鈥檚 because it is used to highlight his unlikely pairing with staunch atheist Hardy. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think about this the same way you do!鈥� Ramanujan rages at Hardy as they argue over the need for proof, explaining later that 鈥渁n equation has no meaning to me unless it expresses a thought of god鈥�. In the end, it wasn鈥檛 Ramanujan鈥檚 religion that set him at odds with the mathematical establishment, merely his lack of training in their traditions.

The film does deserve praise for avoiding the manic chalkboard scenes and strained analogies that often dog mathematical movies. For example, in one scene, Hardy naturalistically scribbles a few paper notes on a concept called the partition function, explaining it to his butler as a real human being would. This realism isn鈥檛 a surprise since mathematician Ken Ono, who has made a career of studying Ramanujan鈥檚 notebooks, served as a consultant on the film.

The Man Who Knew Infinity isn鈥檛 bad, it鈥檚 just safe, cramming Ramanujan鈥檚 colourful life into a well-established, saleable format. I鈥檇 love to see a film break this mould, and suggest producers grab a copy of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, the biography of Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. He was an eccentric rogue. Living out of a suitcase, he turned up at fellow mathematicians鈥� doors and demanded to stay while they worked on proofs. For him, god was the 鈥淪upreme Fascist鈥� who kept the best mathematical ideas to himself. How about a Wes Anderson comedy starring Jeff Goldblum as Erdos? I鈥檇 watch it.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎n easy formula鈥�