pi

Director: darren aronofsky

Actor: sean gullette,mark margolis,ben shenkman,pamela hart

Data Published: Fri Jul 10 1998

Genres: Drama,Horror,Mystery,Sci-Fi,Thriller

Key Words: cult film,the letter pi,go,mathematician,headache

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_(film)

Description: Pi is a movie starring Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, and Ben Shenkman. A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.

Plot: Max Cohen is the story's protagonist and unreliable narrator. Unemployed and living in a drab Chinatown apartment in New York City, Max is a number theorist who believes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers. Max suffers from cluster headaches, as well as extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and social anxiety disorder. His only social interactions are with Jenna, a young girl who is fascinated with his ability to calculate large numbers in his head; Devi, a young woman living next door who sometimes speaks to him; and Sol Robeson, his old mathematics mentor who is now an invalid. Max tries programming his computer, Euclid, to make stock predictions. In the middle of printing out its picks, Euclid prints out a seemingly random 216-digit number, as well as a single pick at one-tenth its current value, then crashes. Disgusted, Max tosses the printout away. The next morning, he checks the financial pages and sees that the pick Euclid made was accurate. He searches desperately for the printout but cannot find it. Sol becomes unnerved when Max mentions the number, asking if it contained 216 digits. When Max questions him about the number, Sol indicates that he came across it many years ago. He urges Max to slow down and take a break. At a coffee shop that he frequents daily, Max meets Lenny Meyer, a Hasidic Jew who coincidentally does mathematical research on the Torah. Lenny demonstrates some simple Gematria, the correspondence of the Hebrew alphabet to numbers, 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. Max is also approached by agents of a Wall Street firm; one of the agents, Marcy Dawson, offers Max a classified computer chip called "Ming Mecca" in exchange for the results of his work. Using the chip, Max has Euclid analyze mathematical patterns in the Torah. Once again, Euclid shows the 216-digit number on the screen before crashing. As he begins to write down the number, Max realizes that he knows the pattern, undergoes a sudden epiphany, and passes out. After waking up, Max appears to become clairvoyant and is able to visualize the stock market patterns he had been searching for. However, his headaches also increase in intensity, and he discovers a strange vein-like bulge protruding from his right temple. Max has a falling out with Sol after the latter urges him to quit his work. One evening, Dawson and her agents grab Max on the street and try to force him to explain the number. They had found the original printout Max threw away and had been trying to use it to manipulate the stock market in their favor; however, they caused the market to crash. Lenny drives by and manages to get Max away from them. However, Lenny takes Max to his companions, who want Max to give them the number. At a nearby synagogue, they reveal their intentions: they believe the 216-digit number was meant for them to bring about the messianic age, as the number represents the unspeakable name of God. Max refuses, insisting that whatever the source of the number is, it has been revealed to him alone. Max flees and tries to visit Sol, only to find out from his daughter, Jenny, that he has just died from another stroke. Searching Sol's apartment, Max eventually finds a piece of paper with the number. Back in his own apartment, Max experiences another headache, but resists the urge to take his painkillers. Driven to the brink of madness, he destroys part of Euclid. 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. The vision ends with Max hugging Devi, who turns out to be a hallucination. Standing alone in his trashed apartment, Max burns the paper with the number and blithely performs an impromptu trepanning on himself in the right cerebral hemisphere with a power drill. Some time later, Jenna approaches Max in a park and asks him to do several calculations, including 748 ÷ 238, which is an approximation for Pi.[c] Max smiles and says that he doesn't know the answer to them. He sits on the bench and watches the trees blowing in the breeze, seemingly at peace.