Not really about 3.14159... per se

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2001)

Pi, I understand, has now been factored to over a billion places. My question: are the figures random? Anybody out there know? This film does not answer that question (nor does it address it). What it asks is, are numbers the language of life? Max Cohen, mathematical genius, believes they are. There is a pattern, and he would like to find it, partly because it's there and partly for use in the stock market. So would some other people. He is thus tormented both within and without.
One of the things that made this a successful commercial film (for an indie venture, of course) is the fine acting by Sean Gullette who plays Max Cohen.
He was entirely convincing as a reclusive and paranoid mathematical genius; but he is also a man like Einstein who emanates charisma and something perhaps beyond charm. Also effective was the story by Director Darren Aronofsky, which, unlike some indie films, actually had a plot with clear conflicts. The choice of Pamela Hart, a strong black woman as a kind of hit woman from Wall Street was excellent. Also very good was Mark Margolis as Cohen's mentor, Sol Robeson. Aimed at a popular audience were, alas, some chase scenes; but they were not badly done, and even seemed appropriate, although I think there should be a moratorium placed on subway chase scenes in movies, at least for the next decade or so. Also aimed at a popular audience was some of the violent images, in particular the scene where Cohen places the power drill to his temple, like the barrel of an executioner's handgun, turns it on and presses. Kids love that shtick. (I could hardly watch.)
Much of the detail was completely veracious, the spiral as an example of complexity in nature, or the wonderful re-enactment of the programmer's moment of truth just before he hits the return key and finds out if his creation will run, crash or go into infinite loop; or a group of fundamental religious people (in this case Hasidic Jews) believing that some sort of numerology will miraculously reveal some major truth of their religion; or even the fact that Max Cohen still used five and one-quarter inch floppies for his data. Also wondrously right was the spider/moth sticky cocoon that gummed up his computer, or the little girl who multiplies on her calculator and then asks Max for the answer, delighted when he gets it right. That a stock market bonanza served as the El Dorado of number crunchers was also right on target. And an especially good fit was the techno rock in the background.
But some of this was definitely wrong. The idea that Sol Robeson would think Max's computer had become or was becoming "conscious" was too much of a leap. Or the notion that the human brain, or any brain for that matter, could predict stock prices as they come out of the ticker is absurd. Complexity theory would argue strongly that such specific data, like the number of rain drops in a storm tomorrow, is in principle impossible to predict. I also didn't like the resolution which allows us to treat whichever of the foregone scenes we like as dream-fantasies. I don't like plots that are resolved by "it was a dream" mechanisms, even, or especially, retrospective ones.
But movies are about images and the image of Cohen's head and his brain and of what hard, metallic things can do to it, is something that lingers long after the lights have come up. Indeed what makes this an engrossing movie is its psychological and visual content. The stark, grainy black and white cinematography actually enhance our appreciation. Indeed, light and dark and other dichotomies are part of the expression of Aronofsky's vision. He juxtaposes contrasting elements of our culture, of the mind and of nature to tease us into seeing that the world is vastly more mysterious than we can imagine. There is order and there is chaos. There is number and there is the organism that is an expression of number. There is rationality and there is insanity. There is the soft, fragile brain and the hard electrodes. There is the game of go, more complex than chess, the wooden board with the simple lines and the black and white pebbles that spring open the door to chaos (the mathematical kind). And there is life, fragile, uncertain, teetering on the edge, and in the fuzzy distance there is the shimmering certainly of a fundamental religion. Aronsky catches all of this and ends up with an electronic poem camouflaged as a movie.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)