HASHTAG - M

 (A Movie Review on "The Story of Maths" First Installment)

       There is no easy way to start a film review on a documentary which is all about mathematics given the fact that I haven’t even got to the point of loving the concept of mathematics itself. Honestly, it was a distress to even aggregate beautiful and conceptually complex words and sentences just to prove a point in where I stand or if I love or hated the first part of the documentary.

          Or then again, maybe it was not troublesome after all.

          As any of us would say, revisiting the past is an awesome blah blah blah and then the rest will just blur out. I’d say, revisiting the past is not all that awesome and considering that the film did not just revisit the past but revisited MATH’S past did not quite help on reassuring us a good time. However, the film maybe had had an awesomely-telepathic-magic-shenanigan (that we don’t know of) which captures attention especially when you watch it by yourself repeatedly until you became interested really and started watching the other three parts. I mean like seriously, this one must have been pulling strings since I don’t usually dig math and I don’t usually dig documentaries for that matter. And then I realized that maybe it was all in the content or maybe it was not the content but the unbelievable drive of passion.

          If it was the content, then I really don’t know how summarizing the documentary would be of any great help since this film review was supposed to assert and evaluate the documentary and not give spoilers you know (Yeah, I got your back!). Going back, if it was the content, then I’d say the facts were neatly ordered and were specially chosen so that even without an interested-tone-of–voice from the speaker, the audience would still be awed because it is always amazing when you learn something you never even had the remorse to inquire about ever existed or could be explained. I mean maybe in a 1/1000 people, one would be really like “hey! Did you know how the ancient Egyptians learned how to count? It started with blah blah blah – again, the rest would be a blur” and that I guess is a true scenario. So given that the film really did a great job on how to present for-old-people interesting facts and modernized it so teenagers could ingest it, then the cast and producers would deserve a slow magnificent clap *gestures slow clap*.

          If for some I-really-don’t-know reason that it was the unbelievable drive of passion of the speaker in the film that was giving off attraction hormones on our attention and brains, then I’d give up saying anything and will just give them an official offering or tribute especially to the mathematician speaker Mr. Marcus du Sautoy (he is famous, he is Google famous!) with a kneeling and bowing combo. I mean really, it is incredible to even document a mathematician’s drive on knowing the history of what he called his profession. I mean that is pretty common on scientists since they are really into revisiting old stuff but hey, mathematicians? Who would have known! Because as every layman’s opinion, the common stereotype of a mathematician would be antisocial and boxed people. Antisocial in a good way and boxed in an awkwardly-awkward way where they just fix their deductions on what was bound by their theories and equations. Boxed people would tend not to dig deeper and “past-er” because that would be out of their comfort zone, but then again, I stand corrected. Some people just got that awesome drive and I’d give them a moment of silence and a series of pure awesome marching bands as a salute.

       

          If I were asked to recommend this to random people, then I’d gladly do it because I know they would not hate me for it. It is one awesome documentary of the history of mathematics and I am just reviewing for the first installment only, not yet the totality of it so it’s just like multiplying awesomeness by itself four times. And if I were to suggest anything, then I’d suggest to the director to not have anything changed because first, if the director or the scriptwriter would want to add more details or facts, then the documentary would be dragging and become a drama series that is out of budget and then the awesomeness meter would drop significantly and second, it they would want to present the facts in a more jolly way with great smiles and love, then I would not even bother watching it because they’d be clearly making a kids show.

          That’s it for the review and as much as I’d like to leave a few very intelligent words to make up a very sophisticated phrase, unfortunately I am no good with that so I’d just rest my case by saying “One does not simply juxtapose mathematics and awesomeness, but this documentary is worth the doubt”.