Pi (film)

Infobox Film
name = π


caption = Film poster
director = Darren Aronofsky
producer = Eric Watson
Scott Vogel (co-producer)
writer = Story:
Darren Aronofsky
Sean Gullette
Eric Watson
Screenplay:
Darren Aronofsky
starring = Sean Gullette
Mark Margolis
Ben Shenkman
Samia Shoaib
Pamela Hart
Ajay Naidu
Joanne Gordon
Stephen Pearlman
music = Clint Mansell
cinematography = Matthew Libatique
editing = Oren Sarch
distributor = LIVE Entertainment
released = July 10, 1998
runtime = 84 min.
country =
language = English
Hebrew
budget = $60,000
gross = $3,221,152
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:160233
imdb_id = 0138704

"π" (also known as "Pi" or "Pi — Faith in Chaos") is a 1998 American psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky, who won the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and the Gotham Open Palm Award. The title refers to the mathematical constant π (Pi).

Plot

The film is about a mathematical genius, Maximillian Cohen, who narrates much of the movie. Max, a number theorist, theorizes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers, and that if you graph the numbers properly patterns will emerge. He is working on finding patterns within the stock market, using its countless variables as his data set with the assistance of his homemade supercomputer, Euclid. He is shown to be capable of doing complex arithmetic calculations in his head when a young girl asks him to solve a problem for her and verifies the answer on her calculator.

The film opens with Max narrating about a time when he was very young and tried to stare directly at the sun, despite his mother's warnings not to. His eyes were terribly damaged, and his doctors were not sure if they would ever heal. They did, but immediately thereafter he began to be plagued with headaches. The headaches are severe enough to drive him to the brink of madness, and he often passes out from the pain. He also suffers from extreme paranoia, manifested in menacing hallucinations, and a crippling form of social anxiety disorder. Throughout the film, it gets increasingly difficult to differentiate what is real and what is a product of Max's hallucinations.

In the course of his work, Max begins making stock predictions based on Euclid's calculations. In the middle of printing out the picks, Euclid suddenly crashes, but first spits out a 216-digit number that appears to be nothing more than a random string. Disgusted, Max tosses out the printout of the number. The next morning, Max checks the financial pages and sees that the few picks Euclid made before crashing were accurate. He searches desperately for the printout but cannot find it.

Other than a woman living on his block who sometimes speaks to him, the only social interaction Max seems to have is with Sol Robeson, his old mathematics mentor, who regards Max as his prize student. Sol had been a leading figure in research into the nature of Pi in his earlier years, but gave it up for reasons that are made clear later on. He sympathizes with Max about the loss of Euclid but becomes unnerved when Max mentions the string of numbers, asking if the string was 216 digits long. When Max questions him about the string, Sol indicates that he came across such a number many years ago. He urges Max to slow down and try taking a break.

At a coffee shop, Max meets Lenny Meyer, a Hasidic Jew who does mathematical research on the Torah. Lenny demonstrates some simple Gematria to Max and explains how some people believe that the Torah is a string of numbers that form a code sent by God. Max takes an interest when he realizes that some of the number concepts Lenny discusses are similar to other mathematical concepts, such as the Fibonacci Sequence. Lenny also mentions that he and his fellow researchers are searching for a 216-digit number that is repeated throughout the text of the Torah. He eventually decides to abandon working on the stock market and assist Lenny.

Max is also being pursued by agents of a Wall Street firm, who are interested in his work for financial reasons. One of the agents, Marcy Dawson, offers Max a powerful new computer chip called "Ming Mecca" in exchange for the results of his work. Max insists that he is uninterested in profit but takes the chip to help his new research into the Torah.

Utilizing the sophisticated chip, Max has Euclid analyze mathematical patterns in the Torah. Euclid crashes again, but once again spits out the 216-digit number. When his computer refuses to print out the number, Max begins to write it down. Midway through the writing, Max realizes that he knows the pattern, undergoes a sudden, intense moment of self-realization, and passes out. Thereafter, Max appears to become clairvoyant and able to visualize the stock market patterns he had been searching for. His headaches also increase in intensity, and he discovers a strange vein-like bulge protruding from his right temple.

The next day, the stock market has crashed and the financial world is in chaos due to the unexplainable drops in value. During a visit with Sol, his old mentor warns him that the mysterious 216-digit number is more than Max realizes, and seems to have powers of its own. Sol insists that trying to understand it years ago had caused him to suffer a stroke, but Max angrily dismisses Sol's concerns as cowardice.

Marcy Dawson and her henchmen grab Max on the street, and try to force him to explain the 216-digit number. They had found the original printout and were trying to use it to manipulate the stock market to their own ends; however, their lack of comprehension regarding the number had led them to unwittingly crash the stock market. Lenny and his fellow Hasidim rescue Max, but soon make similar demands on Max to give them the number. They believe the number was meant for them to bring about the Messianic Age. Max refuses, insisting that whatever the source of the number, it has been revealed to him alone.

Max flees, and visits Sol again, only to find that he has since died of a second stroke. Max searches his house and finds mathematical scribblings similar to the kind Max himself had written. On a Go board, with its pieces arranged in a spiral, Max finds a piece of paper with the 216-digit number. He returns to his apartment.

Driven to the brink of madness, Max experiences another headache and resists the urge to take his pain medication. Believing that the number and the headaches are linked, Max tries to concentrate on the number through the pain. After passing out, Max has a vision of himself standing in a white void and repeating the digits of the number. Whether he is facing God or the vision is just another product of his own mental disorders is not confirmed. The vision breaks with Max hugging his beautiful female neighbor, which turns out to be an illusion. Max is standing alone, clutching himself in his trashed apartment. Giving up, Max burns the paper with the number and trepans himself in the right temple, where he believes his mathematical genius is located. Whether this actually occurs is left ambiguous. Later, Max sits on a park bench and watches the trees blowing in the breeze, at peace. When the girl with the calculator comes to visit him and asks him to supply the answer to a problem she is working on her calculator, he smiles and tells her he doesn't know.

Cast

*Sean Gullette as Maximillian Cohen, a reclusive math genius
*Mark Margolis as Sol Robeson, Max's mentor, who abandoned his research into π after it nearly killed him.
*Ben Shenkman as Lenny Meyer, a Hasidic Jew who introduces Max to Kabbalah.
*Pamela Hart as Marcy Dawson, a representative of an investment firm that is interested in Max's research
*Stephen Pearlman as Rabbi Cohen, the leader of a Jewish sect that pursues Max.
*Samia Shoaib as Devi, Max's attractive and friendly neighbor.
*Ajay Naidu as Farroukh, Devi's boyfriend.
*Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao as Jenna, a girl who plays math games with Max.

Production

"π" was written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and filmed on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film.

"π" had a low budget ($60,000), but proved a financial success at the box office ($3.2 million gross in the U.S.) despite only a limited release to theaters. It has sold steadily on DVD.

According to the DVD's production notes, Aronofsky raised money for the project by selling $100 shares in the film to family and friends, and was able to pay them all back with a $50 profit per-share when the film was sold to Artisan Entertainment. He paid his crew in deferred payments amounting to $200 a day, as well as 'shares' in the film.

The game of Go

In the film, Max periodically plays Go with his mentor, Sol.citation | title = The Game of Go | url = http://www.pithemovie.com/go.html | publisher = PiTheMovie.com | accessdate = 2008-07-12] This game has historically stimulated the study of mathematics [citation | url = http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/orient/go/special/gomath.html | magazine = MindZine | title = Go and Mathematics | last = Fairbairn | first = John | authorlink = John Fairbairn] and features a simple set of rules that results in a complex game strategy. The two characters each use the game as a model for their view of the universe; Sol says that the game is a microcosm of an infinitely complex and chaotic world, while Max asserts that patterns can be found in the complexity of its variations. Actors Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis both spent many hours learning the game at the Brooklyn Go Club, and had the help of a Go consultant for the film. As a result, the portrayal of the game in the film is fairly accurate, although some of the moves played by the actors are seemingly random, and the way Max holds his Go stones is amateurish.

Mathematics and "π"

The film's characters make several mathematical goofs, such as

* The Start of the movie with the symbol of Pi: a sequence going on doesn't have the correct value in digits of Pi - it fails at the ninth decimal position.

* The film shows a drawing of the golden rectangle (with larger side length a and shorter side length b) with $frac\{a\}\{b\}\; =\; frac\{a\}\{a+b\}$. This equation has no solution for non-zero "a", and the golden ratio actually refers to a ratio such that $frac\{a\}\{b\}\; =\; frac\{a+b\}\{a\}$.

* The Greek letter $heta,$ (theta) is stated to be the symbol for the golden ratio. In fact, the letter used is generally $varphi$ (phi).

* In the same scene as the previous goof, while discussing the links between the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio, Max states, "If you divide a hundred and forty-four into two hundred and thirty-three, it approaches theta." What he means is that the ratio between terms of the Fibonacci sequence and their immediate predecessors approaches the golden ratio as one looks further along the sequence. The single division 233/144 has a fixed value, so it does not "approach" any other value.

* Max at one point suspects that the Kabbalists have repeated all of the possible 216 letter names of God, and they confirm this. As there would be $9^\{216\}$ such possible names, this is unlikely- a trillion trillion Kabbalists each reciting a trillion trillion names every year for a trillion trillion years wouldn't begin to approach this number.

* Another mistake is that while the number is referred to as 216 digits long, the number shown in the movie is actually 218 digits long. The number is as follows, shown with the line breaks used in the movie:bquote|94143243431512659321054872390486828512913474876027 67195923460238582958304725016523252592969257276553 64363462727184012012643147546329450127847264841075 62234789626728592858295347502772262646456217613984 829519475412398501

"π" features several references to mathematics and mathematical theories. For instance, Max finds the golden spiral occurring everywhere, including the stock market. Max's belief that diverse systems embodying highly nonlinear dynamics share a unifying pattern bears much similarity to results in chaos theory, which provides machinery for describing certain phenomena of nonlinear systems, which might be thought of as patterns. Unlike in the film, chaos theory does not allow one to predict the exact behavior of a chaotic system like the stock market and, in fact, provides compelling evidence that such predictions are, in principle, impossible.

Kabbalah and "π"

The 216-letter name of God sought by the characters of the film is actually widely known and called the Shemhamphorash or the Divided Name. It comes from [http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?search=Exodus%2014:19-21;&version=31;| Exodus 14:19-21] . Each of these three verses is composed of seventy-two letters in the original Hebrew. If one writes the three verses in boustrophedon form — one above the other, the first from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third from right to left — one gets seventy-two columns of three-letter names of God. The seventy-two names are divided into four columns of eighteen names each. Each of the four columns represents one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

The actual name of God, according to Jewish traditions, is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH or YHVH). This is the name that was intoned in the temple once a year during Yom Kippur, as referenced in the film. What has been lost is not the spelling of the name, as in the film, but the true pronunciation, since words written in Hebrew in the Torah do not include vowels. Furthermore, in the case of the Tetragrammaton, when vowels were used, the actual vowels were replaced with the vowels of the word Adonai to avoid pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, which is a taboo in Judaism.

In addition, it would be highly unlikely that the Hebrew Schemhamphoras would translate into 216 digits in a decimal system for several reasons:
*There is no zero in Hebrew numerals.
*The Hebrew number system is non-positional.

The true 216-digits sequence is (Naturalis Veritas, the end of the history, Massimo Nardotto, 2007):1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9 2 2 4 6 1 7 8 6 5 2 7 9 7 7 5 3 8 2 1 3 4 7 2 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 4 4 8 3 2 5 7 3 1 4 5 9 5 5 1 6 7 4 2 6 8 5 4 9 5 5 1 6 7 4 2 6 8 5 4 9 4 4 8 3 2 5 7 3 1 4 5 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 7 7 5 3 8 2 1 3 4 7 2 9 2 2 4 6 1 7 8 6 5 2 7 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9 1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

oundtrack

"π" launched the film scoring career of Clint Mansell.

References

External links

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* [http://www.pithemovie.com Pi] - Official website