Oxford Murders

Oxford Murders is a sheer classic movie. The script is the standout hero of the movie but the performances of the actors too are brilliant and I genuinely applaud them for making the story so effective. The credits in the movie are French but the dialogues are English, the French directors and writers have got excellent command over English.

I think this is one of the finest psychological thriller movies I’ve watched, even better than “The Imitation Game.” I haven’t heard any examples of psychological thriller movies in past and I just felt to give these credentials to these two movies because they just mesmerize your mind. It is an excellent supplement for literature junkies and needless to say a must watch movie.

The central characters in the movie are Professor Arthur Seldom (Aged guy), Martin (a young student pursuing doctoral thesis at Oxford), Mrs. Eagleton (Aged woman), Beth Eagleton (daughter of the former one), Peterson (Police Officer).

Arthur Seldom is wacky mathematician who has conceived some very complex theory about truth of the life and then try make its mathematical model. He explained some logical series and stating the examples of people having belief that fluttering of wings by butterfly would cause hurricanes on the other side of the world but no one can predict the storms just by simply studying the movements of butterfly. So, philosophy is entirely illogical and therefore futile in every sense according to him.

Seldom’s explanations were very complex and I regret to say that I failed to completely understand them. Mrs. Eagleton’s legs seem to have been amputated and installed artificial limbs. She has got cancer and 5 years ago doctors had declared she can maximally live 6 months more but her daughter Beth takes great care of her and she’s still alive. Beth and her mother live alone in the house and Martin; a foreign student lives like a paying guest there at Eagleton’s. Beth and her mother’s conversations are sour and envious, Beth who is blossoming of beauty and passion in her youth is longing for liberty from caring her mother. Beth seeks a compassion from Martin but Martin is unaware of that. Mrs. Eagleton was part of the team that deciphered the German Enigma machine. The team mostly consisted cryptographers and mathematicians and so she knew Arthur Seldom, the mathematician whom Martin worshiped.

Mrs. Eagleton is murdered, asphyxiated by a cushion. Professor Seldom and Martin both reached at the scene together and they are interrogated by the police. The Professor Seldom was a very unsocial man, he rarely went to visit anyone and just confined himself to his research. He accounted for his visit that he had received a clue that indicated that something was going to happen with Mrs. Eagleton. He said that he threw away the paper which bore the clue and said that it had a circle on it. He told police and Martin that he had conceived a theory that most serial killer’s murders are based on same pattern and can be connected with a logical series. He had received a clue of the murder and so he deduced that murderer wanted to attract his attention and accept that he’s intelligent than him. There is next murder and police receive a clue of it in form of symbol of part of two circles intersecting each other, there is another murder and a clue of triangle is found. It all comes down to solving the logical series and thence stop the murder. During all these incidents, Seldom keeps on confusing the viewers and Martin with his mathematical modulation of murders and logic series. He tells several tales of classic murders and how his friend became lunatic after trying so hard much to decipher the logic series or mathematical theory of some kind.

To stop the murders, Seldom publishes his assumption of next symbol of the logical series of the clues given by the murderer and acknowledges his genius. But still the fourth murder takes place, this time Martin was able to figure out the correct symbol of logical series and he warned the police of the location and targeted people but still police couldn’t stop it.

At last the viewers are given a conclusion as to how did everything take place and how everything was presented as highly planned murder which actually took place on the spur of moment. It was just the brains who looked to fathom it very deep but was relatively simple, but that seems to happen to everyone once they’ve solved the problem. The important detail is the first one that it happened on spur of moment and murderer had no future plans and just randomly connected the dots. Yes, it was all a product of Seldom’s brain. He did not kill anyone but just made a theory to help hide the Beth’s real crime of murdering her mother. He just took pains to place clues with two deaths to show them to be murders.

The manner of flow of story is awesome and I really liked this movie.