The Playmaker Closes Deals on Two to One, Starring Sandra Hüller variety.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from variety.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Philippe Tlokinski in
Adventures of a Mathematician
Perhaps the most tragic but also the most ironic words on the invention of the atomic bomb were uttered by Albert Einstein - “no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap” – the very man who, in 1939, had suggested US President Franklin D. Roosevelt hurry to build one to use against Hitler (“my one great mistake”, he later admitted). The fact remains that the atomic bomb was a sore point for a very long time (and still is today) and, in the field of mass culture, the Manhattan Project was the inspiration behind films, TV series and comic book characters, such as
29/04/2021 - Germany’s Thor Klein tackles the biography of the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, who took part in the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb
Review: Adventures of a Mathematician cineuropa.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cineuropa.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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This new drama, penned by the director himself, revolves around a wealthy, cosmopolitan family from an unnamed German city – probably Berlin – headed by parents Nina (
Sabine Timoteo) and Jan (
Jule Hermann) and her younger brother Max (
Wanja Valentin Kube), the owner of a small pet rat called Zorro. In the first few scenes, we see the family getting ready to spend a weekend in their holiday home, when their getaway is suddenly interrupted by a burglary, after which Zorro mysteriously disappears.
From the very beginning, both the actors’ performances and the gloomy visual atmosphere instil in the viewer the feeling that something very wrong is going to happen imminently and that the protagonists have a wealth of secrets to hide. Except for the sudden burglary – which we don’t see happening on screen, but which we do hear through Nina’s screams and someone’s footsteps – the first third of the film plods along