stylish, but with a ridiculous ending

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2012)

This has the look of an art house film, in black and white, with lots of grainy scenes and shaky camera-work, an anti-hero as protagonist, a genius who lives as a hermit in squalour in New York City's Chinatown, lots of unexplained things throughout the movie. I liked some of it but grew tired of it about half way through.
The ending, however, is completely disgusting. Looking for some sort of pattern that will "explain nature," the hermit stumbles across the answer when his computer spits out a string of numbers. It does that as it is going into a fatal system crash, just as it's about to "die." Yes, die. Literally. I kid you not. We'rre told that in its last split second his computer (a DOS machine with 5-1/4 inch floppies, guffaw) achieves consciousness and sends out its own message.
But that's only the beginning of the nonsense. A group of Orthodox Jews are after his numbers, because they are a code for "the true name of God," which Jews have been searching for for thousands of years. If the true name of God is intoned by the right person in the right place, it will move the world one step closer to--I forgot their word-- Valhalla, Paradise, whatever. There are also some thugs from Wall Street who want the number because it will enable them to predict the stock market. But now the numbers only exist in the mind of the hermit. What to do? He takes a power drill and drills a hole in his skull. End of plot. In the final scene, he is no longer a math genius, just a guy sitting on a park bench. What a stupid plot.
I was disgusted. You may enjoy it if you're prepared for the ridiculous ending.