What is genius? Is it a gift or a punishment? Intelligent people often face misunderstanding and disbelief on the part of those around them. Despite this, they make incredible discoveries and improve the world we live in.
Films about talented people inspire us and give a chance to see what they go through. So, we’ve collected films dedicated to geniuses, real and fictional, who managed to succeed no matter what.
Of course, it can be difficult to focus on the movie when you’ve got loads of homework to do. Many students need to rewrite essay when they need to free up some time for hobbies or meeting with friends. While professional writers are working on your paper, you can concentrate on more enjoyable activities.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
This film is the story of Nobel laureate John Nash, brilliantly played by Russell Crowe.
The movie is based on real events that happened to an outstanding American mathematician. Nash was a genius who made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and game theory. His fate was controversial. There were prominent discoveries, willpower, true friendship, love, as well as madness and years spent in mental institutions.
Thus, the path of a mathematician was full of challenges. He had to pay a high price for his bright mind – all his life, he had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Nevertheless, Nash did a titanic job in the field of game theory, won the Nobel Prize, and became world-renowned.
Good Will Hunting (1997)
The main character of the film is a twenty-year-old boy, Will Hunting, who has very unusual intellectual abilities. He can memorize enormous amounts of information, analyzing it and making discoveries in various fields of science. Yet, instead of being a scientist, he works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Besides, sometimes he ends up at the police station because of fighting.
No one realizes that Will is a genuine prodigy. By chance, a mathematics professor learns about Will’s potential and becomes his mentor. However, the young genius must work on his temper and have sessions with a psychotherapist (Robin Williams). These meetings will change Will’s life.
This film made Ben Affleck and Matt Damon famous: they received the Award for Best Original Screenplay, while Robin Williams received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher’s film tells the story of one of the most popular social networks globally – Facebook. It shows us its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who became the world’s youngest billionaire.
The beginning of the movie is quite interesting. Mark studies at Harvard as a programmer and dates a girl named Erica. However, she leaves him, so Mark decides to take revenge. Thus, he posts photos of the girls (Harvard students) on his page, offering to compare their appearance and rank the pictures.
Back then, no one could have thought that this would become the idea for creating a world-famous website. The overwhelming success of the social network radically changes the lives of fellow students. Since its founding in 2004, Mark and his friends have quickly become the youngest American multimillionaires.
The Theory of Everything (2014)
The biopic about Stephen Hawking was based on the memoirs of his wife Jane Hawking and became an Oscar winner. This is a romantic drama about genius, struggle, faith, and great love.
Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is a physicist, a young Oxford graduate. He has high hopes for the future and plans some great discoveries. However, at the age of twenty, he is confronted with an illness – amyotrophic sclerosis that leads his body to paralysis. The beloved woman Jane (Felicity Jones) and science help Stephen fight his illness and continue working.
The Imitation Game (2014)
Benedict Cumberbatch plays an English mathematician and logician Alan Turing in this historical movie. During World War II, Turing tried to crack the code of Enigma, the German encryption machine. The task drove many specialists crazy. So, the ambitious mathematician had to make tremendous efforts to achieve his goal.
Thanks to his invention, the Christopher machine, Alan tries to decipher the messages of Germans to predict their actions. A team of talented scientists helps him with this.
Even though the mathematician had made a significant contribution to the history of his state, he was later persecuted due to the prevalence of homophobia in those days.
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Directed by Guy Ritchie, this mystery action movie has a brilliant cast: the main roles are played by Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, and Mark Strong.
The film is based on the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle but has an original, intriguing plot. The talented detective Sherlock Holmes investigates murders: warlocks kill people, sacrificing them. Sherlock manages to catch the criminal, Lord Blackwood, and the Scotland Yard police arrest him.
The villain is sentenced to the gallows, but a few days after the execution, Blackwood’s body suddenly disappears. Rumors of a lord rising from the dead begin to spread across London. So, the detective will have to use his deduction to solve this riddle.
Final Thoughts
Nowadays, even more, films are being shot about outstanding personalities. Throughout history, there have been many geniuses in various fields. Their biographies become the basis for movies that cannot leave anyone indifferent.
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Some of the characters are fictional, while others have made amazing discoveries in the past or still continue to excite society with their new theories and findings. Enjoy watching!