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Professor Arthur Seldom is the main antagonist of the 2008 crime thriller/drama film The Oxford Murders, which is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Guillermo Martínez. Seldom is a math professor specializing in logic series hosting seminars at Oxford, only to throw himself into a series of suspicious deaths he believes is meant to target his work.
He was portrayed by the late John Hurt.
Biography[]
Seldom is a logic series professor with a superiority complex. A student named Martin idolized him and wanted him to supervise his thesis, so he tried to challenge his theories in a healthily debated postulation. Instead, Seldom smeared him in front of the entire lecture hall, encouraging Martin to forget his ambitions.
Martin sees Seldom again at the tenants' building run by Julia Eagleton, a friend of Seldom's who has a daughter named Beth Eagleton who's smothered by Julia into caring for her more than dedicating to her music. Julia's found murdered, and Seldom alleges he received a letter saying "the first in a series", which he saids he dreads is a serial killer trying to challenge his studies. Marin and Seldom figure Julia would be overlooked due to her terminal cancer, which Seldom postulates means the next victims will also be terminally ill.
Martin sees Seldom with his former student Kalman, who suffers from metastasized bone cancer, along with religious zealot Frank whose daughter needs a lung transplant, while Martin's with his girlfriend Lorna. Kalman's roommate dies, with a puncture wound found in his arm, with two interlocking arcs revealed as a symbol at the scene.
Martin and Lorna ahve a strained relationship when Lorna is revealed to have date Seldom and Martin becomes more obsessed with the deaths. At a Guy Hawkes Night concert, mathematician Podorov is chased by police on suspicion, but he just drops a banner from the school roof as an offense. An orchestra member dies form respiratory failure, and Seldom finds a triangle at the scene.
Seldom tells Martin a nineteenth century man had a diary of ways to kill his wife, so she killed him when she found it and was acquitted on self-defense. The diray was revealed to be forged by her lover decades later. He argues again a point he made early on during Julia's murder investigation: the only perfect crimes isn't the one that remains unsolved, but which is solved with the wrong culprit.
When a research solves Fermat's Last Theorem, Martin and Seldom join the math division on a bus trip a conference to celebrate. Martin sees Lorna and jumps off the bus, leaving Seldom behind he hopes for good. He then realizes a ten-point tetractys fits the sequence of Pythagorean symbols by the supposed killer, and it could be targeting the bus.
However, a bus with developmentally challenged children is blown up in a suicide bombing by the driver. He's revealed to be the zealot at the hospital, who thought the kids weren't worth living and wanted his daughter to get a lung for her transplant. The police close the case assuming he wanted to get out of the bus and frame th other deaths on a serial killer.
When martin and Lorna plan to leave, martin remembers Seldom's riddle and realizes it was a taunt that said Seldom was always lying, causing Lorna to leave Martin. Martin confronts Seldom and reveals Beth was Julia's murderer, with Seldom stepping in to cover for her when she called. Martin being present couldn't lead him to clean up the scene, so to save Beth and benefit his work, he turned people's natural deaths into "murders", pointing out or leaving behind symbols that were coincidence or setup, even puncturing the roommate at the hospital to stage an injection.
Seldom boasted he never killed anyone, but Martin reminds him of the bus driver inspired by the setup. Seldom spitefully retorts Martin putting out the Eagletons' relationship, which incited Beth to murder Julia inadvertently. Beth and Seldom are presumably arrested.