What a... great movie!

Rating: Null/10 (23 March 2003)

You look around the video store and see movies made about sports heroes, rock 'n' roll legends, the most brilliant generals, and so forth. But just try to find a flick about mathematicians and mathematics... hmmm ok, granted there's A Beautiful Mind, but that comes after Pi. Well you can all see my point. We need more movies about mathematics--arguably the oldest and most basic of the intellectual disciplines based on raw reason! Perhaps the discipline with the greatest number of interesting and quirky practitioners (since it's been along for sooo long). And, let me add, we don't need bad movies to portray this monument to human ingenuity at that! Which is why I welcome Pi with open arms! It does not portray the life of a historical mathematician. Instead the film achieves something which I consider even more impressive--it paints the portrait of a fictional mathematician in an interesting way without ever really going into his mathematical work (for that would mean either fabricating new math, attributing other people's math to him, or discovering new math). Thus suspension of disbelief is attained and we have something that wows those interested in math and uninterested in math alike. The portrait of a man going insane which is always entertaining... I won't go into the plot. I just wanted to mention what a welcome advance for the popularization of mathematics this is and hope there will be more like it. I consider this work superior to A Beautiful Mind, why didn't it win an Oscar, hmmm? Oh well, I'm not complaining... See the movie I gotta go