Actor
Matthew Broderick made his directorial debut with this romantic drama based on the life of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Richard Feynman. Feynman (Broderick) grew up in New York, where, early on, he began to display a remarkably keen intelligence and a fascination with science encouraged by his parents. While in high school, Richard meets a beautiful girl named Arline Greenbaum (
Patricia Arquette), and they quickly fall in love. Richard and Arline intend to marry someday, but they decide it would be prudent to wait until after they finish college -- they have no money, and Richard intends to attend Princeton after finishing his undergraduate work at M.I.T. However, these plans are changed when Arline discovers that she has tuberculosis, which was a very severe illness in the '30s; treatments were not always effective and victims were generally sent to sanitariums, where they could be quarantined from the rest of the population. With Arline's health in question, Richard agrees to marry her immediately. He's also offered a position in Los Alamos, NM, working on a top-secret project for the government. Richard tries to help Arline through her illness as he begins to develop ethical qualms about his new assignment, which is to help design and construct an atomic bomb. Infinity also stars
Peter Riegert and
Dori Brenner as Feynman's parents. Broderick's mother, Patricia Broderick, wrote the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide