I was actually quite disappointed in the acting of the movie, but in a different way. The usual charge that he underacts her death is indeed silly, as you have pointed out. But I think that his acting as a whole, insofar as it is supposed to refer to the real Richard Feynman, seems pretty awful to me. Broderick seemed to desire to portray him as a quiet, reserved, almost awkward type of a person. Yet anyone who has actually seen Richard Feynman talk or lecture wonders if this interpretation is correct. Even just by reading his memoirs, Richard Feynman is seen to be someone excited about life and learning about the world, often in a very outgoing way. He had a unique personality in that he was a serious great thinker and hard worker, while at the same time often engaging in ridiculous antics with a profound sense of excitement. This is probably more exaggerated later in his life, but it seems to be true of him even when he was younger. Consider all of his stories about Los Alamos, from the censorship of his letters to his safe cracking, and you can understand this aspect of him.
So, in saying that the acting isn't very good, I mean that Broderick simply didn't interpret his character in a way that seems sufficient to me. Even Arquette's performance seems to suffer from a similar problem. Arlene comes off as being sort of dopey in comparison to the way Feynman himself talks about her. She hardly feels inspiring in this movie in the way she seems to have been.
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BakedCarbon
16 years ago
After more viewings, I think I agree with some of the things you mentioned nm4490. You're right, in his books, he does seem to come off as a more extroverted character, and less awkward.
I think Matthew Broderick chose to take a slightly different path in displaying it though. He comes off as more mischievous and impish (I especially loved the scene where he was trying to point out the hole in their security).
And from Feynman's books, I get a sense that he is more sensitive to people's feelings than he might've liked to admit. It seemed like he had some insecurities, but he did a damn good job of masking them. And certainly, with the focus of the film being on his relationship with Arlene, it seems sensible to portray the more sensitive side of Richard Feynman. I can imagine him to have been a very different person when he was with Arlene, even from the way Richard Feynman spoke in interviews. He's very playful with most topics, but he handles the more sensitive subjects with the utmost care.
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wcui
16 years ago
and remember, Feynman himself stated that he used to be an awkward type of person when he was younger (think it's in one of the earlier stories in surely you're joking). So such an interpretation might not be totally off the scale either...
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haldurgz
10 years ago
I met Richard Feynman back when he was a professor at Caltech (probably around 1980 or so) -- we had him as a dinner guest at our student house. He was quite personable and regaled us with stories about his practical jokes at Los Alamos, about his painting and his defending of a local Pasadena 'bordello' (he had sold them an original painting, and when the town was trying to get it shut down, the bordello asked him to speak for them to help keep them open). He also was known to participate in Caltech dramatic presentations where he often would play the bongos, he had his own art show at the small campus art museum, and he taught an unofficial/informal class on lockpicking and safe cracking. This was a few years before he died of cancer.
I was unlucky enough to just miss taking freshman and sophomore physics from him. He loved teaching the introductory classes. When I was a Freshman, he taught Sophomore Physics, and he switched to Freshman Physics when I became a sophomore (darn it!).
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