The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

Synopsis: T.S. Spivet lives on a ranch in Montana with his mother who is obsessed with the morphology of beetles, his father (a cowboy born a hundred years too late) and his 14 year-old sister who dreams of becoming Miss America. T.S. is a 10 year-old prodigy with a passion for cartography and scientific inventions. One day, he receives an unexpected call from the Smithsonian museum telling him that he is the winner of the very prestigious Baird prize for his discovery of the perpetual motion machine and that he is invited to a reception in his honor where he is expected to give a speech. Without telling anyone, he sets out on a freight train across the U.S.A. to reach Washington DC. There is also Layton, twin brother of T.S., who died in an accident involving a firearm in the family's barn, which no one ever speaks of. T.S. was with him, measuring the scale of the gunshots for an experiment, and he doesn't understand what happened.
Director(s): Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Production: The Weinstein Company
  5 wins & 6 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.1
Metacritic:
53
Rotten Tomatoes:
78%
PG
Year:
2013
105 min
648 Views


The West

Our ranch was located

several miles north of Divide,

lost in the Pioneer Mountains.

The closest thing to traffic was when

Union Pacific Freight trains

rumbled through the valley.

at 5:
44 am

11:
53 am,

5:
15 pm.

Divide was literally located

on the continent of the divide.

To the east, rivers

spill into the Atlantic.

To the west, it is

spill into the Pacific.

One day my brother

Layton and I, decided to

christian its natural water.

Look over here.

Hello Big Sur!

Hello New Orleans!

But Layton's favourite pastime

was shooting at anything that moved.

Big loop.

Elbow up.

Ready?

Now!

Go!

Stop!

Upon my brothers request,

father built us a seesaw.

Slow down!

Come on, cowboy.

My father loved Layton

more than anything in the world.

Yes, Good deal.

I would have liked to

be a daredevil, too.

But I knew I never be upto it.

One year earlier

Orffyreus have five

marbles trapped in tubes,

creating an imbalance. This

rocking motion, however,

caused the energy to dissipate.

Robert Flux built a

mill based on the concept

of perpetual rotation.

However the inherit friction of the

machine caused significant loss of energy.

Italian philosopher Marco Zimara

imagined a machine that

could recycle the wind.

But the force required

to compress the bellows

was greater than the energy

produced by the windmill.

So it didn't work.

No scientific challenge remains greater,

most prestigious,

more mythical,

than that of finding the key to

perpetual motion.

Yet some affirm that

this quest is doomed to failure.

Such a machine

defies the laws of the universe.

The very basis of

thermodynamics assumes that

all mechanism will

eventually come to stop.

Given the current state

of Science and Technology,

isn't the quest for perpetual

motion better suited for

idealists and poets

than real scientists?

What if imagination start it

and science end it?

Those who push the boundaries of

science, what they not all poets?

I'm certain

that as we speak here today,

that somewhere in this country,

a budding Leonardo Da Vinci

is gaining up for the challenge.

Thank you very much.

Oh God...

Hello.

Sir, I am the Leonardo from Montana.

Oh yeah? What you are going to do?

I accept the challenge.

You do?

One afternoon in August, the phone rang

while my sister Gracie and I

on the porch, shredding sweet

corn into large metal buckets.

What?

the buckets were riddled with bite

marks dating back to last spring

when our dog Tapioca got depressed

and started eating metal.

Gracie, can you hold this for a second.

This is what I predicted.

Manticora herculeana

is a subspecies of cicindeler.

Who was at that called?

Same time, has a heart

at tip of the mandible

doesn't seem to have a

white spot on the electra.

Mom?

The phone, who was it?

Oh, a call for T.S.

A call for him?

Who was it?

I do not know.

She is still in the

line. she is waiting.

You should probably go.

If you finish before I get back, count the

number of good ears and the number of bad ones.

Why don't get the kernels,

while you're at it?

I had 3 options to get to the phone.

The corridor / kitchen way,

the quickest but also the most boring.

Upstairs /Downstairs route,

but the shift in

altitude made me nauseous.

I opted for the third and riskiest,

particularly when father

was working around the house.

The scent in room smelled

like whiskey stained leather.

and moldy photographs.

If you just closed your eyes,

you could feel the dust

forming onto your prairie

after a cowboy posse cavalcade.

Layton use this thing as setting

room, was the greatest thing since

quirrell trees.

I would like to speak to T.S.

Spivet, this is Miss Jibsen,

Under Secretary of the Smithsonian.

Hold on.

Father!

Phone!

My father is all yours, Ms. Jibsen.

Hello, Mr. Spivet.

Yes! My dad is listening.

Could you hand him the phone please.

No! My father is mute, Ms. Jibsen.

He can hear you but can only

respond in sign language.

I will translate everything for you.

You are the T.S. Spivet

that has just invent the magnetic wheel?

One second. Father saying...

Yes, I only sent you the blueprints.

Because, I didn't

have the time to do it.

The quest for perpetual movement!

I mean, Its the Holy

Grail of inventors...

Tell me Mr. Spivet, I take

it you live in Montana?

Coppertop ranch.

Longitude:
112 44' 19".

Latitude:
45 44' 27".

These are the coordinates to my bedroom.

Wow! Clearly you have an eye for detail!

which is a reckless ad for

any great inventor.

Father is asking:

so you are the head of the Smithsonian?

Well! Technically, I'm

the Under Secretary, but,

many people would say I run the place.

Wow

Yeah.

Look Mr. Spivet,

your invention

has won our prestigious Baird Award.

Spencer Baird Award?

Indeed.

Our 150th anniversary

gala is in a week's time

and this would be perfect

oppurtunity for you to

You know Make your acceptance speech.

Of course, we would

provide you with a sign

language interpreter.

But...

I'll be in class.

I go back to school on Monday.

You must teach at the

University of Montana?

A quick phone call to your

president, Jack Campbell,

and it will be taken care of. I mean,

We are talking about the

Baird Award after all.

Prairie of Truth

Mountain of Lies

I was just thinking.

I can't come out to

receive the Baird award.

I have too much work to finish.

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Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet (French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ ʒœnɛ]; born 3 September 1953) is a French film director and screenwriter known for the films Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, Alien Resurrection and Amélie. more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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