Namir Khaliq, Producer
Mark A. Levinson, Producer, Director, Writer

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2024, Film Independent, Producing Lab

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 120 minutes

Field of Science: Genetics, Microbiology

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

The stories follows two intertwined timelines – the first set in the 1950s; the other in the 1980s.

In 1957, STUART RESSLER is a young scientific prodigy at the University of Illinois, where he works as a microbiologist for an eclectic team of researchers working to decipher the process through which DNA encodes its information onto proteins. Ressler’s research group includes JEANNETTE, a married biologist 10 years Ressler’s senior. The awkward young Ressler becomes smitten with his older colleague’s flirtations. Initially laser-focused on cracking the code of DNA, his infatuation with Jeannette increasingly distracts him. The two scientists begin a secret affair under the nose of their team and of Jeannette’s husband. Amidst the affair, Jeannette introduces Ressler to Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” — a suite of music which comes to replace DNA as the object of Ressler’s obsessions.

The second timeline takes place in the mid 1980s. FRANKLIN TODD is a struggling writer working the night shift at a Brooklyn data processing firm. He works alongside an older Stuart Ressler. Ressler is clearly brilliant, and Franklin can’t understand why a genius is working a dreary data processing job. Convinced Ressler was once someone important, Franklin goes to his local public library and enlists the help of librarian JAN O’DEIGH to track down biographic information on his coworker. Jan helps uncover evidence of Ressler’s past as a promising young scientist, and she and Franklin become preoccupied with determining why this seemingly eminent biologist quit the world of science. As Franklin and Jan continue to dig into Ressler’s past, they quietly begin their own romantic affair.

The two eventually learn that Ressler quit his scientific work after he learned a horrible truth about his relationship with Jeannette: she was unable to have children with her own husband, and began sleeping with Ressler only as a last ditch attempt to conceive a child. The unexpected intensity of the romance that grew out of the affair frightened Jeanette, and she furtively leaves her job — and Ressler — to protect her marriage. The resulting heartbreak caused Ressler to forsake his research before he was able to unravel the mechanisms of the genetic code.

Franklin and Jan go through their own romantic estrangement when Franklin learns that Jan has undergone a tubal ligation, erasing her ability to have children in the future. Franklin criticizes Jan for eliminating her chance at becoming a mother, while Jan stands by her decision, driven in part by the fear of having a child with genetic defects. The two go their separate ways, until Ressler himself intervenes to bring the couple back together, a dying wish before he succumbs to cancer. Franklin and Jan reconnect, working to piece together the strands of Ressler’s research with which they hope to collect into a book about his life – a creation of science and art they can produce together.