I both saw and enjoyed E&E, and I was going to write a post of my own, but since you asked, I'll put some of my thoughts here.
I didn't think the science was handled that badly, but on reading another review (in today's Times, I think) I realised that the reason why Einstein's relativistic gravity works for Mercury wasn't really covered at all; "space tells matter how to move, matter tells space how to curve" was all you got.
Even during the film, I was more bothered by the way that certain things were dramatised, which made me wonder if they'd happened at all. For example, were the Cambridgeshires at Ypres? Was Eddington's friend killed in the same attack as Sir Oliver's son? Similarly, I found out today that it wasn't Planck who was the go-between, but a cosmologist named de Sitter (a name your theoretical physicist friends should know). On the other hand, there were stories that could have been told- Wikipedia tells me that Haber's wife committed suicide when she learnt of the poison gas attacks, and my wife has read a book (Einstein on Love) that documents that not only was he sleeping with Elsa, but with her mother. Obviously, all this would have spoilt some of the neat symmetries in Hodge's script, but then, real life is complicated like that.
I also suspect that some people could find the pricking of patriotism annoying, but then, it is my position, so I was fine with it.
All in all, though, it was good to see Tennant stop being quite so manic, the roles for women were larger than you'd expect in many dramatisations of scientific stories, and it conveyed the context well. I'd definitely recommend it to people.
I'm sure you're right about various of those details, like the deaths at Ypres, having been elided/changed/treated with artistic license in the interests of a) simplicity and b) symmetry. I think I decided fairly early on to treat it very much as a drama "inspired by real events", as the saying goes, and I would certainly be a bit suspicious of real life turning out to be quite that symmetrical.
That's a shame about Planck, though, since I did enjoy the positively cadaverous Donald Sumpter!
And as for Einstein's love life - there are times when life is just too implausible to survive as drama, I guess! Maybe the writer felt that would be a step towards bedroom farce too far...
But as you say, there was a lot to enjoy - and since you can fit what I know about theoretical physics on the back of a postage stamp, it's not hard for even the most simplifying of scientific-history dramas to up my net knowledge. Particularly when they intrigue me enough to send me off to Wikipedia and the Dictionary of National Biography (university jobs have their uses!) afterwards.
I didn't think the science was handled that badly, but on reading another review (in today's Times, I think) I realised that the reason why Einstein's relativistic gravity works for Mercury wasn't really covered at all; "space tells matter how to move, matter tells space how to curve" was all you got.
Even during the film, I was more bothered by the way that certain things were dramatised, which made me wonder if they'd happened at all. For example, were the Cambridgeshires at Ypres? Was Eddington's friend killed in the same attack as Sir Oliver's son? Similarly, I found out today that it wasn't Planck who was the go-between, but a cosmologist named de Sitter (a name your theoretical physicist friends should know). On the other hand, there were stories that could have been told- Wikipedia tells me that Haber's wife committed suicide when she learnt of the poison gas attacks, and my wife has read a book (Einstein on Love) that documents that not only was he sleeping with Elsa, but with her mother. Obviously, all this would have spoilt some of the neat symmetries in Hodge's script, but then, real life is complicated like that.
I also suspect that some people could find the pricking of patriotism annoying, but then, it is my position, so I was fine with it.
All in all, though, it was good to see Tennant stop being quite so manic, the roles for women were larger than you'd expect in many dramatisations of scientific stories, and it conveyed the context well. I'd definitely recommend it to people.
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That's a shame about Planck, though, since I did enjoy the positively cadaverous Donald Sumpter!
And as for Einstein's love life - there are times when life is just too implausible to survive as drama, I guess! Maybe the writer felt that would be a step towards bedroom farce too far...
But as you say, there was a lot to enjoy - and since you can fit what I know about theoretical physics on the back of a postage stamp, it's not hard for even the most simplifying of scientific-history dramas to up my net knowledge. Particularly when they intrigue me enough to send me off to Wikipedia and the Dictionary of National Biography (university jobs have their uses!) afterwards.
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