Albert Einstein, scientist, physicist, PIMP!!!!

This is something I would expect from the Lifetime channel. Completely focused on the women of his life (mother, wife, cousin, etc.). The commentary is not from anyone with a degree in science, but rather from would-be tabloid journalist. Just horrible. I had to stop about 14 min into, after the constant regurgitation of his relationship with his wife- or lack there of. Finally, the movie plays on the opinion that the only way to live a "complete" life is to be married and have children.

Before I make any criticisms on this documentary I would like to admit that there are some positive aspects of the documentary. First it was consistent in its general thesis that Einstein was a wonderful theoretical physicist but a problematic personal life, which was further explained that Einstein's mission to understand the universe has its absolute priority. The overall theme of the documentary emphasized throughout that Einstein saw himself having a greater purpose that supersedes anything, which I found to be an interesting theme because it shows that Einstein had a great devotion to his works. Secondly, the documentary probed Einstein's personal relationships with his spouses and girlfriends, which provided an interesting account of what Einstein was like.However, it is precisely because of those strengths that the documentary became too limited, inflexible, and filtered. The documentary initially presents itself as trying to explore Einstein's personal life, but most of the account of his personal life was focused on his personal relationships not his personal life as a whole. By showing Einstein as a scandalous man who engages in extramarital relationships is not a very flattering biography, and it should not be surprising because many famous people such as Paul Tillich, Martin Luther King, and others also engaged in extramarital relationships. I know that it was not the intention of the documentary to present Einstein as a scandalous man, but by continuously pouring information about his scandalous affairs eclipses other aspects of Einstein that made him Einstein. For example, while the documentary was focusing on Einstein's personal relationship it was specifically focusing on his romantic relationships, not his friendship. Kurt Godel, for example, a famous mathematician, is such an important figure and friend in Einstein's life, and to take him out of account is very disappointing because Kurt Godel was a very close friend of Einstein's and had an important impact on Einstein's life. What is sad is that the documentary was 60-70% of the time focusing on his romantic relationship but very little on his personal life as a whole, and this is very irritating because romantic relationships does not completely define personal life, they are merely an essential part of it. Thus the documentary failed to give us any meaningful insight in Einstein's personal life as a whole. The imbalance between Einstein's personal life and his scientific theories is another flaw in the documentary. Precisely because the documentary is based on the basic assumption that there is a dichotomy between one's personal life and one's works/ideas is what essentially undermines the documentary. Basically, there is not dichotomy between one's personal life and the works he or she has produced, they are one and the same. For Einstein, his scientific contributions were very important to him and he sincerely find them to have value and meaning. It is this typical anti-intellectual prejudice that the intellectual works Einstein produces is remote from his personal life that I find deplorable about the documentary; intellectual life is predicated and encompassed by the personal life. Any intellectual thoughts or works are influenced by one's personal, historical, social, political, and cultural context; Despite the fact that Einstein worked in a confined study room away from the troubles of the world, this only proves my point that Einstein took his works personally and seriously, and how he produced them defined who he is. The whole premise or framework of what a "biography" suppose to be is what I strongly disagree with because someone as great as Einstein simply cannot fit into that "box". The prejudice of the "biography" is that one's intellectual life and worldview is not personal, and it subliminally defines the personal life as sexual and romantic which merely shows a typical decadent Hollywood theme that creeps into this would-be biography. It is true that Einstein had a scandalous life and can appear to be a little chauvinistic (which isn't surprising since he lived in the early 20th century when sexism and chauvinism was a norm), but this by no means should eclipse the grandeur of his works and other personal aspects of Einstein. The biography failed to show a clear general picture of both Einstein's personal and intellectual life (even though I argued that they belong to each other), it focused way too much on his extramarital affairs and his romantic relationships and it placed little attention on what his theories really meant. I am not expecting the documentary to give an hour lecture of Einstein's scientific theory, but it can take any theoretical physicist 10-15 minutes to summarize in the most rudimentary sense. There is simply no excuse why the documentary decided not to explain the meaning of his works. For me personally I think a more scientific documentary on Einstein's works is much more interesting than this one, but if there was a documentary that talks not only about his romantic endeavors but also the diversity of his personal experience and the depth of his theoretical works then I would consider that documentary to be the most ideal. But to come to an unfortunate conclusion, I give this documentary 2 out of 5. It did receive information from credible experts, but anyone who has read about Einstein's life once would already be familiar with most of them, so nothing significant was said in the documentary.

This biography was ok. Some people have written reviews saying that this biography mentions too much of Albert Einstein's personal life but I disagree. That's what biographies are about-people's lives. Albert Einstein was more than a Nobel prize winning physicist; he was a man too. This biography talks about more than just his work and talks about him as an actual human being.