A.  EINSTEIN

The Los Angeles Times called this award-winning film. "The most astonishing and poetic compressions of grand ideas ever achieved, a visionary film."  Albert Einstein is considered one of the great thinkers of all time. Yet his lofty scientific theories are still little understood by most. But who was the person behind this mask of fame? Most of the story focuses on his dilemma created by his militant pacifism. He becomes a tragic hero, from his extraordinary flight from the Nazis (his summer home became an Aryan youth camp) to his fateful 1939 decision to alert President Franklin Roosevelt of the need to develop an atomic bomb to counteract the impending Nazi atomic threat. Never has a thinker's pacifism been as mangled and ironically turned inside out as Einstein's. Later he said, "I burnt my fingers writing that letter." The film interweaves his erratic personal life--mixing an ascetic lifestyle, divorce, and Hollywood premieres, and Einstein’s deeply internal letters beautifully played by William Hurt. The people closest to Einstein who, at the time, were in the last years of their lives add to intimacy of the story telling.    There is a brilliant, hypnotic musical score by composer Michael Galasso.