Pi Guy

I’ve always been fascinated by stories that are told from the point of view of someone whose grip on reality is a bit shaky. The literature or cinema of madness touches on elements of fantasy and horror. The reader or viewer is forced to navigate through the work without a reliable guide and must decide what is real and what exists only in the mind of the protagonist. What can I say, I like a challenge.

Pi (1998) is just such a challenge. Directed and co-written by Darren Aronofsky, it is the story of obsessive mathematician Max Cohen. Max’s world is a black-and-white one. Not the standard black-and-white we usually see on the screen, which is mostly shades of gray, but a stark black-and-white that signals to the viewer that this world view will be different from our own.

Max believes all that is in nature can be expressed in numbers. He says that if he can graph those numbers patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. He is looking for those patterns. He studies the stock market, which he sees as a type of organism that represents the global economy and as such is influenced by the actions of billions of minds. He thinks that he will be able to program his computer to predict the market and thereby be closer to understanding the patterns of nature.

Gosh, a movie about math. Sounds pretty exciting, right? Actually, this is less about math and more about obsession, mind, and the human spirit. It is, in fact, something of a thriller. Max is being followed by a group of suits who think that his work could give them the key to getting very rich. He is also being followed by a group of Kabbalists who believe that his research could give them the key to the secrets of the universe. Meanwhile his friend and mentor Sol is telling him that the path he is on can lead only to madness, and it looks like Sol may be right. Max suffers hallucinations, migraines, and blackouts. He increasingly shuts out human contact and has turned his apartment into a sort of supercomputer with himself as a component. The pace of the movie gets faster as Max reaches for enlightenment while spiraling into insanity.

As I said, Pi is a challenge. It’s not one of those movies that lets you relax and watch the pretty pictures. It requires and rewards engaged and thoughtful viewing.

Oh, by the way, the secret to the universe is 88450962738635927503375196794306759962173159040169
41344340076296835915743375167911976157334751953759
20401694343151239621353184932676605800621596380716
39950137145995438750765589253387561875035402998115
2863950711207613.

And here you thought it was 42.