ME & ISAAC NEWTON A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
Michael Apted, director of absolutely the best documentary series ever made (42 UP and its predecessors), as well a wide variety of feature films from COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER to THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, examines the world of the scientist in ME & ISAAC NEWTON. As he did in INSPIRATIONS, a documentary that looked into the creative processes of famous artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Apted gets into the heads of scientists to understand what makes them tick and what inspires their scientific explorations. The result is completely engrossing, and the film is equally accessible to the scientific literates and illiterates.
Although the comparisons to Errol Morris's FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL are obvious, Apted takes a completely different approach to the art of the documentary. Unlike Morris, who relishes humor in all forms, Apted uses it sparingly. Still, Apted isn't above including footage of intelligence-test taking pigeons and of old Flash Gordon adventures.
Mixing in footage of the scientists growing up with interviews of them at their labs and in the field, the film looks in depth at seven scientists. Frankly, fewer would have been better. In a film in which few criticisms are possible, the only other one would be that a final section that mixes politics with doomsday views of the future feels like little more than remarkably unscientific speculation.
Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, says that his personal driving force was a picture of the incomplete manuscript that Einstein left when he died. Kaku had an obsession to finish the work that had stumped the great man. "This was more fascinating that any murder mystery," he explains, breathlessly. Kaku is a guy who watched Flash Gordon as a child and even built an atom smasher in his garage when he was a teenager. A man who works on a unified string theory of everything using a 10-dimensional hyperspace model, his favorite diversion is ice skating. As he zooms across the ice, he says that it is "just me and Isaac Newton."
Ashok Gadgil, an environmental scientist who came from India to Berkeley in 1973, is a sweet but driven man who looks for solutions that can be brought to third-world countries immediately and with standard parts. One beautifully simple example we are shown is the use of a cheap ultraviolet light for purifying water in third world nations. It was the inner workings of a spinning top that was his inspiration as a child to explore the world of science.
At our screening, Gadgil told us that they interviewed many scientists before they chose these seven. He said that they sent him a tape of INSPIRATIONS, which scared him. He isn't comfortable with personal questions, and in INSPIRATIONS, Apted kept asking the artists about their sex lives.
Maja Mataric, a computer scientist who emigrated as a teenager from Yugoslavia, specializes in robotics. Mataric, who studied art in school, has a wide variety of interests besides robots. She even shares her shoe designs with us.
Also at our screening, Mataric said that journalists come to her lab all of time, usually asking nothing but inane and shallow questions such as, "Will robots take over the world?" Because of this, she didn't initially take this movie seriously and didn't even bother watching the tape of INSPIRATIONS that they had sent her.
There is a wonderful and little known connection with FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL that she shared with us. She was finishing up her doctorate under robotics scientist Rodney Brooks, when Errol Morris came to MIT to make FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL. If you look closely, you can see just her legs in one of the scenes with the robots in that movie. And some of Mataric's graduate assistants' legs appear in robot scenes in ME & ISAAC NEWTON.
"Science to me is almost a religion," Gertrude Elion, a Nobel Prize-winning pharmaceutical chemist, tells us. "To me, science is truth and truth is beautiful." Sadly, Elion died soon after her interview.
Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist, talks, among other things, about the "Eureka moment" of scientific ideas, which he says studies have proven to be a myth. Patricia Wright, a primatologist who lives in Madagascar, tells us that "it's the failures that give you the energy to make the rest work." Finally, Karol Sikora, a cancer researcher, shares with us how he is doing fundamental research on approaches to fighting cancer.
"Science is the engine of prosperity," Kaku tells us. A better explanation of the New Economy has never been spoken. ME & ISAAC NEWTON is the type of film that should be seen by every junior high school student, but it has much broader appeal. It is an engrossing film that leaves you hopeful and gives you insights that you never knew that you were missing.
ME & ISAAC NEWTON runs 1:40. It is not rated but would probably be a G. It is fine for all ages, but kids under 10 will likely not be interested.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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