Nathan Ellis has
difficulty connecting with other people and processing the changes in his
life. His father was killed in a
car accident when he was nine years old and this has left a huge gap in his
life. His mother, Julie Ellis
tries very hard but she doesn’t understand math. Nathan is more comfortable with numbers than people. Mr. Humphreys is one of the teachers at
Nathan’s school and he agrees to take Nathan on as a math pupil. Nathan wins a place on the UK team to
attend the International Mathematics Olympiad. He goes with a group of sixteen other math whizzes from
England to Taipei for a summer camp.
In Taipei, he will work with Chinese math students so both groups can
hone their skills. Only six
students will be selected from each country to attend the Olympiad so the
stakes are high. Nathan has
trouble interacting with the other students and Taipei is a sensory overload
for his system.
When Nathan goes to
the summer camp, you really wonder how he is going to set aside his food
needing to be prime numbers. He
also needs to eat at certain times of the day. He starts studying the language of Taipei on the plane and
he’s as soon as good at this as he is in math. Nathan finds it hard to believe that other students do not
bully the math teens in Taipei because they are ‘different?’ Nathan faces constant bullying in
England. This film is an
interesting study in material that has been covered in other films about
excelling in one field but having problematic social maturity. 3 ½* (I liked this movie)
111
min, Drama directed by Morgan Matthews with Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally
Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Jo Yang, Martin McCann, Jake Davies, Alex Lawther, Alexa
Davies, Orion Lee.
Note: Imdb 7.2 out of 10, 86% critic 78%
audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 1 ½*, Amazon 4.2* out of 5* with 380
reviews.
Special
Note: Filmed in Sheffield, South
Yorkshire, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England and Taiwan. This film is based on Daniel Lightwing
and his story as a teen and as a mathematician.
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