Einstein, Dostoevsky and films

Watched the BBC's Einstein and Eddington last night. I was really looking forward to seeing how Andy Serkis played Enistein; somehow it feels like a role he was born to play! I'm also not knocking yet another opportunity to see David Tennant in - well - anything at all, really. I have to admit, I was somewhat gutted about the fact that much of the filming took place in and around Cambridge - at precisely the times when I was no longer there! Sod's law... The film (which, at an hour and a half, is what it was, I suppose) left me feeling a little bit empty. The performances were brilliant for the most part, and the script was very good. However, it felt as though it needed a little more time to develop the central characters. I suppose for that sort of running time, you're talking about a series, and I don't think the story warranted that, but I still felt as though something were missing. The references to faith and God were very interesting, but felt a bit out of place; I would have liked the writer to explore that side of things a little more. One of the most important things this programme did, however, was to remind you that science never takes place in a vacuum. So much of what happens is informed by the time and place in which it takes place. The speech given by Eddington at the very end of the programme highlighted this well: he said that, in the light of this new science (Einstein's General Relativity), the world felt brand new and a little bit more lonely. A relevant epithet for the post-WW1 society, too, I think. Boyfriend commented that the great leaps in science always seem to occur in times of historical unrest or military campaign. There is something disquieting about this: can progress only occur through the necessity of beating one's enemies (or competitors)? It also interestingly raised the issue of scientific discovery being used as much for propoganda as for military gain. Very good programme, all in all.

I think, if I were to be any scientist, I would like to be Einstein. I have a great deal of time for him. He had the ability to see the patterns in things, and prized imagination very highly. He did not entirely detach himself from living in the world either; he was acutely aware of the implications of his scientific research, particularly insofar as it led to the development of the A-bomb. It reminded me of the fact that he donated his brain to medical science when he died. Rather like the phrenologists of the Victorian age, medical researchers were keen to study his brain to see if there were any physiological location for his genius. They found nothing special. I like that! It is like Dostoevsky's Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov: an exceptionally holy monk whose body is expected to remain miraculously preserved after death, but actually decomposes at an unusual rate. Such groundedness gives me the hope that anyone can be anything - monk or genius - that the potential is there. (Although some years later another scientist obtained special permission to look again at Einstein's brain and found a certain section of the frontal lobe to be larger than normal...)

I've just watched Stardust for the nth time and still love it to bits. It's definitely the kind of film to watch when you're on your own for the evening and it's raining outside. I have to admit (as sacrilegious as this may sound to some) that I prefer the screenplay to Neil Gaiman's novel - it has more humour to it, and, I suppose filmically, it works better. Which is what it's meant to do, after all! Anyway, the soundtrack has now gone on my Amazon wishlist...