Pi

Released 1998
Stars Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, Stephen Pearlman, Samia Shoaib
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

p is the story of Max Cohen, a computer geek with a genius for mathematics. Socially, Max is completely inept. Aside from occasionally showing off his arithmetic abilities to a girl who lives in his apartment building, he avoids all human contact, including any interaction with his attractive next door neighbor, who shows an interest in him. Max lives by three basic principles: (1) mathematics is the language of nature, (2) everything can be represented and understood through numbers, and (3) there are patterns in nature. His objective is to use his home-built supercomputer, Euclid, to analyze the patterns in the financial markets to predict the exact performance of every stock. During the course of his studies, he encounters a mysterious string of 216 digits, and, when a Jewish numerologist becomes aware of this, he confides in Max that "the pattern in the Torah is 216 digits," and this discovery may hold the key to unlocking God's true name. Max, who doesn't believe in God, is more interested when his mentor reveals that he once encountered a "bug" of 216 digits when he was investigating p.

Max's mathematical brilliance comes at a price, however: he has frequent, debilitating headaches and seizures that send him into a bizarre state of consciousness. During those episodes, he encounters people who stalk him then disappear, and, on one occasion, he discovers a brain lying on the ground in a New York City subway station. The key to Max's genius and pain appears to be a mark on his skull, and, perhaps in order to eliminate the one, he must sacrifice the other.

Aronofsky elected to shoot the film in black-and-white, which lends a dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings. p transports us to a world that is like yet unlike our own, and, in its mysterious familiarity, is eerie, intense, and compelling. Reality is a fragile commodity, but, because the script is well-written and the central character is strongly developed, it's not hard to suspend disbelief. As the movie draws to a conclusion, it perhaps becomes a little too ambitious in trying to unify all the great questions of existence. At that point, p slides with only limited success into an exploration of metaphysics and spirituality. Nevertheless, I prefer movies that take risks like this, even when they're flawed, to those that try for a safe, formula-driven resolution. So, while I didn't necessarily buy everything that transpired in the final fifteen minutes, I was surprised by much of it, and Aronofsky never lost my attention.

Summary written by James Berardinelli