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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: Fox Lorber
Salesrank: 102443
Released: April 25, 2000 |
| Our Price: $27.42 |
| Used Price: $7.97 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Actor Matthew Broderick (WarGames, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) offered up this, his 1996 directorial debut, as a whimsical romance and a tribute to an extraordinary scientist. Broderick plays the brilliant and eccentric Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in a story based on his early life. The fun-loving Feynman and his young bride Arlene, played by Patricia Arquette (True Romance) enjoy their courtship and young married life in New York until Feynman is called away to New Mexico to participate in the Manhattan Project and the development of the hydrogen bomb. Their storybook romance is further complicated when Arlene discovers she is seriously ill, and Feynman must confront not only the morality of his participation in the development of the bomb but the nature of life and death and the love he has for his wife. A nice, small sweet romance that aims low but scores high, Infinity is a quirky but poignant love story and a fine directorial debut. --Robert Lane
Infinity Reviews:
A love story with history 
2008-09-29 - This obscure gem of a film is clearly a labor of love by Matthew Broderick, who directed it and stars as Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in the story of his first marriage.
Broderick ensures that we get a picture of Feynman's quirky personality, the very embodiment of the Scientific Method and iconoclastic clowning. But, the focus is clearly on his growing love for Aline, their marriage, and their life together.
The film has a little more science than most Americans are comfortable with, but it's not overwhelming, and it serves to illuminate the relationship between Richard and Aline.
Lovely overlooked story
2008-09-18 - The first time I saw Dr. Richard Feynman was when he was demonstrating why the space shuttle "Challenger" blew up with a rubber ring and a glass of ice water. He amazed me then.
I didn't actually think about Dr. Feynman's life until I saw "Infinity" available. Matthew Broderick, who both plays Feynman in the film and directs it. According to Feynman, he thought of the time depicted in this film as a romance, but it was also time where everything changed in the country.
The story begins with Feynman (Broderick) meeting Arlene Greenbaum (Arquette). They fall in love during pre WWII times. They're engaged when they learn that Arlene has TB. Feynman takes his undergrad at MIT and later grad work at Princeton. When he's offered a job at Alamosa, NM to work on the bomb, he accepts so he and Arlene can be wed. The story briefly touches physics and the development of the a-bomb.
What the story really is about is coping with illness during different times. Back then, doctors didn't want patients to know what their diagnoses were. Families didn't want their children to marry if there were severe illnesses involved, either. Aside from his scientific genius, what marked Feynman as extraordinary was that he worked so hard at his marriage and making his wife as happy as she could be.
This quiet, overlooked film takes us back to a different time in this country's life. Broderick did an excellent job of taking us back. It's well worth a watch if you are interested in either quiet romances or films from this period of time.
Rebecca Kyle, September 2008
Where's the FEYNMAN? 
2008-07-23 - Glad somebody did it but damn why a love story and a boring one at that which doesn't even show the mans intellect or his very humors nature. Disappointing on so many levels
Good Story
2008-06-11 - As noted elsewhere, this is a love story about Dick and Arlene Feynman. It doesn't have much in it about the famous antics of one of the most human and personable physicists ever. More's the pity. It's a good film, but it leaves room for several future movies that incorporate all the stories that he left us.
A decent movie about a great man 
2006-09-24 - I had the opportunity to have met Feynman when I was an undergrad at Caltech. We actually had him as a dinner guest when I was there (this is back in the late 70s/early 80s, which is long after the time period covered by this movie). He really was very personable, he loved talking to students. He actually taught a class at caltech after-hours on lockpicking (his dad was a locksmith). He was someone who you really wanted to get to know. I agree with the previous reviewer that this movie does not accurately portray him. Still, the movie was entertaining, which is why I give it 3 stars.
