But why is streaming rental for 24 hours? Why can't we do rentals for two weeks for videos? Is there a good reason to make it so difficult to stream? I don't want to watch it a million times. I just want to make it through once, but it takes me several sittings typically to finish a movie.
Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).
Einstein is probably a terrible example here because in his day he was regarded as a pop culture icon so there’s plenty about him in film [1]. That’s not even considering that he’s had plenty of excellent biographies written about him. Agora with Rachel Weisz is an excellent one about Hypatia.
Could we do better as a society? Maybe. To do that though you’d have to bring these stories into film classrooms and get students inspired. But first you have to make the stories inspiring and a lot of them aren’t thaaat much except for the advancements they provided to the field and that’s harder to convey. Maybe Leibniz and Newton would be a good rivalry on the screen.
My point is even einstein doesn’t get the same treatment as, say, a politician or actor gets as far as coverage. There’s more out there about Elvis than Newton.
This whole theme is sort incompatible with movies. Most people like to relate to the characters in the plot. The "genius guy" does something we can't understand has very little appeal as a story.
Same thing goes for mathematics that is too "deep". Most people could not care less about prime numbers. Yes, they drive important cryptographic procedures. But we care about cryptography. We care that the message gets to its destination "safely". If its done using prime numbers, imaginary numbers, geometric numbers or fantasy numbers, it does not matter.
See I disagree. They tend to live very interesting lives, not because of their achievement, but I suspect their achievements and how interesting their life is is inextricably intertwined. They tend to not fit in convention very well and live at odds with society in a not too dissimilar way to say a Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison, but without the music and poetry. You’re right of course that folks like to watch movies about people they are aware of and understand their contribution. But I’d also point out that society overall is a lot better educated than in the past, more people than ever would find scientists and mathematicians and engineers easier to identify with and would understand their contribution than ever before - and those people also control an incredible amount of the available disposable income.
I think the real issue is the producers and directors and business folks in the film industry are not in that camp. They’re more likely to make a biography of Robin Williams than Paul Dirac, and they decide what gets made.
There have been many, many films made about Srinivasa Ramanujan. I'd particularly recommend the 2015 one, The Man Who Knew Infinity, I found it super charming.
There's an excellent series in which Newton plays a large part, called The Baroque Cycle. I'd love a TV adaptation of it, although you'd have to gut much of academic stuff in it and just focus on the (excellent) plot
I've seen a few biopics or dramatizations of famous people - notably, The Imitation Game about Alan Turing which was all right, and the Theory of Everything which supposedly was about Stephen Hawking's work but it was more about his relationships - it was based on the memoirs of his ex-wife. But both were dramatizations from secondhand information at best; a biopic of older people like Einstein will be even more picky.
I mean would a biopic about Einstein touch on his many relationships (including his cousin) and the drama around that?
Also, biopics are terrible. I can't think of a single one that is worth it, especially if you consider that for many of the subjects, you could just watch a documentary on the person anyway, often with real footage and interviews with them. Biopics are usually just cash grabs and weird Hollywood flexes about mimicking someone else. The fact that they do so well at the awards ceremonies speaks to this.
I find them useful for teaching my 8 year old something about the person behind the name. After watching Einstein and Eddingiton (pretty ok movie) she has a better appreciation for who he is beyond a name. Obviously you learn almost nothing about his research and it’s a very tiny slice of Einsteins extraordinarily interesting life.
