Pi is an independent film starring Sean Gullette, and produced by Darren Aronofsky. It is a black and white movie that is kind of stark and harsh in its images. It is meant to be so as it is a post-modern metaphore for the search for Truth; in this case for the meaning to life, the Universe and Everything, literally. What makes this movie interesting is what the character does with this knowlege once he finds it. Along the way to gaining this knowlege, he interacts with three other groups, each symbolic of a different path he might take with his new found knowlege.
Our friend is named Max Cohen, and he is a brilliant mathematician. He once looked into the sun as a child, in direct disobedience to his mother, and he went blind. But he also gained a brilliant ability with numbers, somehow, accompanied by terrible headaches that sometimes leave him unconscious on the ground and bleeding from the nose. (See what happens when you dont listen to your mother?) He is researching the stock market looking for mathematical algorythms that can predict the market, but on the way discovers something much greater; a 216 digit number that is the key to expressing ALL life and nature mathematically, and thus being able to predict the behavior of anything, not just the stock market.
There is the Wall Street investment group. This nameless, ruthless group of investers want to use the heroes knowlege to make money on the stock market, of course. They try to seduce, then threaten our hero, but he disdains material wealth and so they do not tempt him. Later he needs their assistance, so he treats them as they are trying to treat him, and so he uses them for his own purposes and then defrauds them of their end of the bargain. Obviously they represent the use of this knowlege for the pursuit of pleasure and power, and our hero being a postmodernist hero has no use for such (yeah, right).
Then there is the kabal of Jewish religious zealots who think that our heroes knowlege can restore Isreal's greatness and bring the Messiah to Earth. But our friend is a Cohen, a descendant of Aaron, and feels he has as much right to this secret knowlege as the other preists of the kabal, and he refuses to share it with them, telling them that it was given to him and not them for a reason. They dont threaten him and they let him walk away with his knowlege.
Then their is his mentor and friend with whom he spends much time playing Go and talking about mathematics. This man is a metaphor for the pursuit of mathematics for its own sake, for just the fun of it. And this mentor is telling him to stop his relentless pursuit, take a bath and take a break, which the young man does not do, of course. finally young Max rejects his mentors advice and claims that the mentor lost his love for math because he became afraid of the Truth. Later the mentor dies from a stroke after returning to his similar quest, and Max is left to contemplate his mentors fate while sitting in his mentors empty and lifeless apartment.
So what DOES Max do with this wonderful knowlege? Well he puts a power drill through his own head, of course! He destroys his own knowlege, his own holy grail, before it destroys him (yeah, right), a typical post-modern response not only to Truth, but to our entire civilization. Amazingly, Max fails to kill himself, and the movie ends with him unable to even do math in his head anymore but at least he has a smile on his face.
This movie was not done by a mathematician, at least not a sober one, and there are several funny moments when it is painfully apparent. Like when Max' mentor tells him the story of Archimedes running through the streets shouting 'Eureka!', a story any mathematician has heard a million times. And yet his mentor tells it to Max as if he is just now hearing it for the first time. (right!) And then Max tells the priest of the Kabal that he knows this cult has already explored every 216 digit number but they fail to understand it. HELLO, MCFLY! There is no way on Earth these guys have explored every 216 digit number, as that is greater than even a Google! They could have hired a million mathematicians to write every 216 digit number they can for a million years and still not get the specific number! And again any mathematician would know this.
This movie about a mathematical genius who doesnt understand the most basic facts about mathematics is the most powerful, though completely inadvertent, metaphor of the whole movie as it demonstrates that post-modernists are too incompetent to even understand what they are trying to evaluate and are thus unqualified to pass judgement on anything except their own pointless, nihilistic lives.
But I would encourage them all to emulate the young hero of this movie and put a power drill to good use....... on themselves.
And as such, I think the movie Pi is a wonderful movie for anyone to see that has an interest in such esoteric storylines akin to 'The DaVinci Code' or 'Angels and Demons'.
Our friend is named Max Cohen, and he is a brilliant mathematician. He once looked into the sun as a child, in direct disobedience to his mother, and he went blind. But he also gained a brilliant ability with numbers, somehow, accompanied by terrible headaches that sometimes leave him unconscious on the ground and bleeding from the nose. (See what happens when you dont listen to your mother?) He is researching the stock market looking for mathematical algorythms that can predict the market, but on the way discovers something much greater; a 216 digit number that is the key to expressing ALL life and nature mathematically, and thus being able to predict the behavior of anything, not just the stock market.
There is the Wall Street investment group. This nameless, ruthless group of investers want to use the heroes knowlege to make money on the stock market, of course. They try to seduce, then threaten our hero, but he disdains material wealth and so they do not tempt him. Later he needs their assistance, so he treats them as they are trying to treat him, and so he uses them for his own purposes and then defrauds them of their end of the bargain. Obviously they represent the use of this knowlege for the pursuit of pleasure and power, and our hero being a postmodernist hero has no use for such (yeah, right).
Then there is the kabal of Jewish religious zealots who think that our heroes knowlege can restore Isreal's greatness and bring the Messiah to Earth. But our friend is a Cohen, a descendant of Aaron, and feels he has as much right to this secret knowlege as the other preists of the kabal, and he refuses to share it with them, telling them that it was given to him and not them for a reason. They dont threaten him and they let him walk away with his knowlege.
Then their is his mentor and friend with whom he spends much time playing Go and talking about mathematics. This man is a metaphor for the pursuit of mathematics for its own sake, for just the fun of it. And this mentor is telling him to stop his relentless pursuit, take a bath and take a break, which the young man does not do, of course. finally young Max rejects his mentors advice and claims that the mentor lost his love for math because he became afraid of the Truth. Later the mentor dies from a stroke after returning to his similar quest, and Max is left to contemplate his mentors fate while sitting in his mentors empty and lifeless apartment.
So what DOES Max do with this wonderful knowlege? Well he puts a power drill through his own head, of course! He destroys his own knowlege, his own holy grail, before it destroys him (yeah, right), a typical post-modern response not only to Truth, but to our entire civilization. Amazingly, Max fails to kill himself, and the movie ends with him unable to even do math in his head anymore but at least he has a smile on his face.
This movie was not done by a mathematician, at least not a sober one, and there are several funny moments when it is painfully apparent. Like when Max' mentor tells him the story of Archimedes running through the streets shouting 'Eureka!', a story any mathematician has heard a million times. And yet his mentor tells it to Max as if he is just now hearing it for the first time. (right!) And then Max tells the priest of the Kabal that he knows this cult has already explored every 216 digit number but they fail to understand it. HELLO, MCFLY! There is no way on Earth these guys have explored every 216 digit number, as that is greater than even a Google! They could have hired a million mathematicians to write every 216 digit number they can for a million years and still not get the specific number! And again any mathematician would know this.
This movie about a mathematical genius who doesnt understand the most basic facts about mathematics is the most powerful, though completely inadvertent, metaphor of the whole movie as it demonstrates that post-modernists are too incompetent to even understand what they are trying to evaluate and are thus unqualified to pass judgement on anything except their own pointless, nihilistic lives.
But I would encourage them all to emulate the young hero of this movie and put a power drill to good use....... on themselves.
And as such, I think the movie Pi is a wonderful movie for anyone to see that has an interest in such esoteric storylines akin to 'The DaVinci Code' or 'Angels and Demons'.
