A Trip to Infinity

I'm not a scientist, so I can't verify the science in this film. But I'm a designer and I have to say - visually this Netflix production is really breath-taking.

In my opinion, this is how popular science films should be. The visuals here are not only beautiful, visually pleasing and exciting, but they are really smart, creative and really exciting. The creators did a really fantastic job connecting creativity, VFX and science to make these extremely complex scientific concepts accessible and digestible for the general public.

A great watch for all ages and probably a really good chance to make your teenage kids excited about science.

Also, unlike many woke Hollywood productions these days, this one is actually a great example of inclusivity and diversity.

Not a documentary for people without a scientific background, most of the concepts are pretty complex and will not be understandable by the regular folk. In fact, many people will probably be offended just because they don't believe in science in the first place and want to live in blissful ignorance. That is why it has reviews below 5 stars.

There is also the risk of people mistaking infinity with god, which is a long stretch. Infinity is a mathematical convention that helps us understand things outside our scale, but math in itself isn't even a perfect representation of reality (although we use it as an approximation). There probably is a complex math-like language underlying the tissue of reality, one that could explain what infinity really aims to be, but it is still not within our reach.

An advice: if you felt interested or doubtful about the concepts represented in this documentary, they are not new, there are a thousand of youtube videos and creators devoted to explain this matter better.

The never-ending curiosity to know the unknown is something that scientists devote their life. And infinity is one of the biggest of them.

When we talk about the existence of God and the end of infinity, it seems like we don't know; or maybe we have an infinite answer to it, yet we can't be so sure. It made me feel that every second of our life is crucial in the realm of infinity, where my existence is so tiny.

Apart from my philosophical understanding, the documentary was very thoughtful and insightful. It explains infinity from different perspectives. It felt like my brain was enjoying a good meal. The psychedelic animations and VFX were undoubtedly creative, aesthetic, and eye-soothing. Loved it!

I have no idea why some people would give this a high score. This is not a documentary. This is some nice visuals with lose incoherent points that are never made. If you give it a low score, you must not understand it right, cause your brain is to small? It has a few good points, but most of it is just empty space and very little science. Hire a few smart people, make them say some stuff, add visuals, done. Netflix almost always makes horrible documentaries. Just buy this sort of content from other creators instead. For the amount of actual information that is given to the viewer this could have been much shorter.

This documentary avoids some of the mistakes that physics documentaries usually make. The visuals take a lot of artistic license but they're mostly not inane and actually help us visualize certain concepts, the experts give a lot of one-liners but they don't feel too much like trolling us or just bantering (for the most part), the subject is open-ended but there's a focus to ponder over just that.

However, I wish the questions and cues were a little less of a shtick so that the experts could expound on the subject a little more, in their own ways - there are actually many of us who like to be intellectually challenged (those who are seeking for entertainment wouldn't even give this a shot anyway).

For example, when the experts are given a glass globe in their hands and asked about holding infinity, it's cute but a little cringey. In fact, Levin already points out that's not how infinity works, if it's truly infinity, we won't be having a comfortable bird's-eye view of it, it's just a very human-centric approach. Moments like these attempt to lure profound statements over something that's already very profound on its own. Instead, what may work better is that, with each example that the experts give, they could go a little deeper, discussing things like how they may try to prove it mathematically/experimentally, what are the limits, paradoxes, different theories on it, etc.