E. Penrose
01-26-2002, 06:29 PM
This past week I've seen "Infinity" and "A Beautiful Mind," movies about math and mathematicians. (The former movie is MUCH better, though it takes more attention to view.) At the end of "A Beautiful Mind" we are told that its hero has won the Nobel prize for mathematics. We see none of these ideas in the picture.
John Nash sees hallucinations. We are shown them in the course of the picture. The movie is extraordinary in showing them as events in his life, with no fog machines or musical stings as clues that they are false. He also deals in ideas on the frontiers of mathematics, ideas which were instantly applicable to everyday life. We cannot see these. In a code room, Nash sees applications. The movie has Nash's eyes widen, and some gimmicky animation grouping numbers. Later, he works on an important paper. We see him typing. He says that he can't focus on ideas. We get a better sense of the concrete details of his marital life, including his problems with intimacy, through montage and dialogue. This is a top-budget movie by a "name" director. I could argue that Hollywood is afraid of ideas. But I wonder if there are any means for such communication. "My Dinner With Andre" had plenty of ideas, and showed them through dialogue; and it was BORING!
The printed word is wonderful at communicating thoughts, as well as the shades of intensity which accompany meaning. Some of this can be communicated through the ear, and through its electronic extensions. But images cannot carry this sophistication.
A movie works, at best, through implication: a photograph of a man precedes one of a child, and you suppose his love.
I would think animation would be wonderful at showing the way a mind works. It makes pictures of things which were never seen. But there really aren't very many thoughtful cartoons. It isn't simply America's love of the dollar. The vaunted Eastern Europe studios had half a dozen "intellectual" cartoons and a vast number of trite, stupid or heavy-handed ones.
"Yellow Submarine" is an exeption to this rule. It brought Elvis and King Kong and John Wayne to the animated cartoon: it also brought shades of meaning to its thoughts. The "Elinor Rigby" segment expands upon the barrenness expressed in the song.
Another exception is the commertials Warner Brothers did for capitalism, and later released theatrically -- though these rely strongly upon the lecture. A third is Disney's "Donald in Mathamatics Land." Well, really. For all its hokum and pedantry, it found visual equivalents for the ideas it discussed. An adult can go back to those images to consider the ideas.
Am I wrong? Any other examples that I missed?
E. Penrose
John Nash sees hallucinations. We are shown them in the course of the picture. The movie is extraordinary in showing them as events in his life, with no fog machines or musical stings as clues that they are false. He also deals in ideas on the frontiers of mathematics, ideas which were instantly applicable to everyday life. We cannot see these. In a code room, Nash sees applications. The movie has Nash's eyes widen, and some gimmicky animation grouping numbers. Later, he works on an important paper. We see him typing. He says that he can't focus on ideas. We get a better sense of the concrete details of his marital life, including his problems with intimacy, through montage and dialogue. This is a top-budget movie by a "name" director. I could argue that Hollywood is afraid of ideas. But I wonder if there are any means for such communication. "My Dinner With Andre" had plenty of ideas, and showed them through dialogue; and it was BORING!
The printed word is wonderful at communicating thoughts, as well as the shades of intensity which accompany meaning. Some of this can be communicated through the ear, and through its electronic extensions. But images cannot carry this sophistication.
A movie works, at best, through implication: a photograph of a man precedes one of a child, and you suppose his love.
I would think animation would be wonderful at showing the way a mind works. It makes pictures of things which were never seen. But there really aren't very many thoughtful cartoons. It isn't simply America's love of the dollar. The vaunted Eastern Europe studios had half a dozen "intellectual" cartoons and a vast number of trite, stupid or heavy-handed ones.
"Yellow Submarine" is an exeption to this rule. It brought Elvis and King Kong and John Wayne to the animated cartoon: it also brought shades of meaning to its thoughts. The "Elinor Rigby" segment expands upon the barrenness expressed in the song.
Another exception is the commertials Warner Brothers did for capitalism, and later released theatrically -- though these rely strongly upon the lecture. A third is Disney's "Donald in Mathamatics Land." Well, really. For all its hokum and pedantry, it found visual equivalents for the ideas it discussed. An adult can go back to those images to consider the ideas.
Am I wrong? Any other examples that I missed?
E. Penrose