Kurt Gödel In The Movies
Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP 2023-11-12
And a Limited TV Series — all in 2023
Vanity Fair sourceKurt Gödel—or rather the actor Chris Urbaniak portraying him—appears in one brief scene in the movie Oppenheimer. He has no lines. He is named only by Albert Einstein—played by Tom Conti—regarding Gödel’s fear of being poisoned by Nazi spies.
Today we discuss how Gödel has been portrayed on the silver screen and its streaming successors.
It is logical that Gödel would appear with Einstein. He was Einstein’s constant companion on walks around the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, until Einstein’s death in 1955. In 1949, Gödel found the first solution to Einstein’s equations that allows for closed timelike curves, opening the possibility of time travel.
The cameo in Oppenheimer lasts only a few seconds, but has provoked renewed discussion. This comes amid signs of a greater cultural uplift this year.
Asteroid City
Gödel gets a mention apart from Einstein in this year’s other film set amid nuclear test sites, Asteroid City. These excerpts from the script say all there is to know:
DINAH: …After that, the second person says the name the first one said, then adds another. Then the third person says both plus a new name. And then the next person keeps going, and so on in a circle. It’s a memory game. Get it? I’ll start. Cleopatra. Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose. Like that? … SHELLY: Got it. Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. [OTHERS]: Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Paracelsus. …Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Paracelsus, uh, Kurt Gödel. Oh, the Vienna Circle. The Austrian logician. Correct. …Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Paracelsus, Kurt Gödel, William Bragg. … …Cleopatra, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Paracelsus, Kurt Gödel, William Henry Bragg, Lord Kelvin… … Say the new one first. …Hojo Tokiyuki, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Midge Campbell, Lord Kelvin, William Henry Bragg, Kurt Gödel, Paracelsus, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Jagadish Chandra Bose… Cleopatra.
At that point, a crash of thunder and a cutaway end the game. OK, Gödel never appears, but writer and director Wes Anderson wove him into his fabric of allusions.
I.Q. (1994)
Kurt’s biggest action came in the 1994 Tim Robbins/Meg Ryan rom-com I.Q. He is played by the character actor Lou Jacobi, and is even more roly-poly than Walter Matthau as Einstein.
You read that right: roly-poly. No spectral appearance, no reticence. Gödel and Boris Podolsky and Nathan Liebknecht are Albert’s rat-pack: drinking and tennis and golf buddies.
Despite having two authors of the famous EPR paradox about quantum entanglement, they only discuss entanglement of sporting equipment in tree branches:
Liebknecht [to Edward, a young car mechanic]: What do you know about gravity? Gödel: We have a little gravity problem… Liebknecht: Ahh, he threw the racket up to get the birdie. He threw Gödel’s cane up there to get the racket. Gödel: I threw Podolsky’s golf club up there to get even with him! Podolsky: We’re going to throw Gödel up there next. It’s a vicious tree.
Throwing the real-life Gödel might have been possible, but definitely not the 250+ pound 5’11” Jacobi. Later, Gödel is given a line that was spoken in real life by Einstein:
Kurt Gödel: I would rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.
Can Kurt do “dad jokes”? I guess he can:
Boris Podolsky: James! How’s the [lab-]rat business? James Moreland: Well, actually it’s mostly students I’m experimenting on now. Kurt Gödel: My God, the mazes must be enormous.
Cringeworthier comedy crossed my mind when I got a “Kurt Godel” hit on the original 1997 Austin Powers movie, but it was a credit to a sound technician of that name (no umlaut). He can also be found here for 1997’s Lost Highway on clicking “Sound Department.”
Gödel at Sundance
This year brought another palm for Gödel besides the buds in Asteroid City and Oppenheimer. The writer John Lopez won a 2023 Sundance Institute Commissioning Grant for a film titled Incompleteness. This will be an adaptation of material from Rebecca Goldstine’s book of that name. As described in the announcement:
Incompleteness takes place in the run up to World War II, when logician Kurt Gödel falls in love and discovers two mind-bending proofs that shake mathematics and philosophy to their cores. However, in surviving an era of collapsing reason, Gödel’s own mind soon turns against him with only his wife Adele to sustain him.
Gödel finds love in a different dimension in Martha Goddard’s 2014 short film Gödel, Incomplete. Its raciness matches its tagline:
Like most great discoveries, the first time was an accident.
It begins with time travel to meet an older Gödel. Perhaps our interviews with Gödel in 2011–2012 had some consultation value? This film did not make Sundance but played a host of other festivals in 2014.
Incompleteness, The Series
All this exposure may, however, be topped by a new Limited TV Series titled Incompleteness, which is written and directed by David Ash. Its website expressly declares its inspiration in Gödel’s mathematical work.
There is a bit of time travel here too. IMDB dates it as a 2023 series, but it won for Best TV Series at the 2020 Los Angeles Film Awards. The time warp owed to the pandemic halting production after 3 of 8 initial episodes. The other 5 were completed in June, hence it is a 2023 release. Here is its whole panoply of awards to date:
What is it about? IMDB says:
A workaholic TV news producer finds out he is dying and dedicates his remaining days to making a movie about the meaning of life for his estranged wife and their soon-to-be-born son.
But this is certainly an incomplete description. The series website says:
INC0MPLETENESS is a psychological dramedy set the in the present-day American Midwest that revolves around the relationships of three couples, interconnected by a tragedy, as they try to find love in a modern world while dealing with their own mortality, betrayal, Chinese cabals, A.I., genetic engineering and the illusion of free will.
This leaves enough open ends to connect other elements of Gödel. At the bottom under “WHY?” is a hint that may verge on a subject that we have only once referenced: Gödel’s proof in modal logic that any possible entity with properties commonly ascribed to God exists of necessity.
Open Problems
Will Gödel grow in popular culture—apart from Einstein? His official Net Worth listing includes the first of a nice three-part lecture about him. But its link goes to the sound technician Kurt Godel (no umlaut).
[sourced Vanity Fair at top; other tweaks]