The problem is, people keep trying to make mathematics understandable in a ‘school’ type of way. So the characters talk to each other - dialogues no one in their right mind would actually have in reality. If you know maths you are not going to talk like that; if you don’t know maths you are even less likely to talk like that.

 

I tried to read the book, but gave up. But the film kind of sounded a bit better and so I gave it a go. Wooohhoooo! What a ride! Fermat is renamed into Bormat - why not go all the way and call him Borat? The mathematics certainly sounds like it was done by Borat.

 

Wiles is renamed into something like Wilkins. But the actor playing him looks a bit like him, so that kind of defeats the purpose of changing the name.

 

But everything is topped by this image of a demented mathematician who not only lobotomizes himself (in order to guess continuation of logical sequences or something like that) but has cancer of the bone and all his limbs fall off and so he lies in his hospital bed and with one remaining arm writes mathematical symbols. Pleeeeeaaase!!!! What was that all about?! Maybe that was the autobiographical element that the writer introduced...

 

I feel as mean as the wicked witch of the East, which of course I am. So it’s ok to say what I think!