Adventures of a Mathematician is a movie inspired by the memoir of Stanislaw Ulam—a brilliant Polish mathematician who came to the U.S. in the 1930s, taught at Harvard, and became a critical figure inside the Manhattan Project. His close friend, scientist John von Neumann (“Johnny”), helped make the opportunity happen. By 1943, the two of them, along with dozens of other brilliant minds, were situated in the desert of Los Alamos, feverishly at work developing unfathomably destructive bombs. The world, after all, was at war.
The scientific leader of the Manhattan Project was none other than J. Robert Oppenheimer, a figure whose life and ideas have received much discussion lately, owing to Christopher Nolan’s three-hour, Oscar-winning blockbuster. But even before Nolan’s film, the Manhattan Project was synonymous with the cocky and charismatic mastermind behind the atomic bomb.
Yet as central to the story of the bomb as Oppenheimer is, he’s of course just one of countless figures who participated in the world-changing experiment that played out in northern New Mexico. Another was Stanislaw Ulam.
Born in Lvov, Poland in 1909, Ulam had a natural gift for math and earned his PhD in the city of his birth. After that, he spent the majority of his life in the U.S. He died in 1984.
There’s much to enjoy about Adventures of a Mathematician, written and directed by Thor Klein. The talented cast was well selected for their roles, and in any given scene there’s a character’s inner drama that we care about. As much the movie is about nuclear weapons, it’s just as much about the intricacies of relationships.
The movie opens in 1944, with a shot of the New Mexico desert blanketed in mellow sunlight. In suit and tie, Stan and Johnny walk side by side. With an unhurried delivery, Johnny tells a joke; Stan laughs. There’s a slight moment of silence. Then, with no sense of awkwardness, the conversation turns to a more serious topic: nuclear chain reactions.
The ability between the two to engage in light-hearted exchanges as well as deep dialogue about the mysteries of the universe was something they cherished in one another. Later in the film, Johnny remarks to Stan, only half jokingly, “You’re the only functioning relationship I’ve ever had.”
After this opening scene, viewers are taken back to 1941. Stan is carrying out a fellowship at Harvard; his younger brother, Adam, is also with him in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their sister and parents are back in Poland, as Hitler’s vicious onslaught threatens ever more of the continent. The brothers are worried for the safety of their family, and Stan sends whatever money he can.
During his time in Cambridge, Stan meets Francoise, a young literary-minded Parisian studying at college. During chit chat at a party, Stan gives her a playful explanation for Einstein’s theory of relativity: “Imagine that we are the only people in the room, and that we are the only two planets in the universe,” he begins.
Despite their different natures, Stan and Francoise go on to marry; and when he heads to Los Alamos to begin work on the top-secret Manhattan, she goes with him.
The movie’s gravity begins here. Stan—caring brother, dutiful son, immigrant intellectual, newly married husband, and soon to be father—feels the pressing demands of his many roles. All of it takes place under the chaos of World War II and his personal involvement in developing weapons with enough power to decimate an entire city.
Among his colleagues, Stan is at odds with physicist Edward Teller (the only figure of the Manhattan Project, aside from John von Neumann, that director Thor Klein develops in any significant detail). Teller wants to develop a hydrogen bomb (a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb); Stan doesn’t think it’s feasible or practical, but also disagrees with its development on a moral level.
As the war goes on and President Truman decides to pulverize two Japanese cities, those within the Manhattan Project must grapple with the consequences of their intellectual contributions. These scenes of sobering reflection make for powerful moments, as do the conversations between Stan and Francoise as they contemplate the existence of nuclear weapons in the context of bringing a child into the world. It’s hard to imagine a more profound and philosophical conversation for two spouses to have.
Adventures of a Mathematician has many engaging scenes, and Stanislaw Ulam’s life makes for an interesting story. But the movie, as a cohesive whole, feels off. We are never really sure where our attention and engagement is supposed to be directed. The movie would have benefited from telling either the story of friendship between Stan and Johnny, or instead the story of Stan and Francoise. Both relationships yield interesting dynamics, but the interweaving of the two delivers a somewhat stunted, unbalanced result.
Spectatio 