Pi
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Movie Reviews of Pi
Movie Review: read Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge too
Summary: 5 Stars
Some information is simply not safe for us--not because there is something wrong with its possession in the abstract, but because it is the sort of thing we humans are not well suited to cope with. There are various things we simply ought not not to know. If we did not have to live our lives amidst a fog of uncertainty about a whole range of matters that are actually of fundamental interest and importance to us, it would no longer be a human mode of existence that we would live. Instead we would become a being of another sort, perhaps angelic, perhaps machine-like, but certainly not human. -Nicholas Rescher, an essay entitled Forbidden KnowledgeIn his excellent book, Forbidden Knowledge (see Orrin's review), Roger Shattuck discussed the persistence and continued relevance of one of the central themes of Western Civilization : the idea that certain kinds of knowledge have been placed, quite specifically and intentionally, beyond our reach because we do not have the capacity, at this time, to handle them, or to wield them responsibly. I've no idea if Darren Aronofsky had read Shattuck's book before making this movie, nor whether Professor Shattuck has ever commented upon the film, but it perfectly illustrates the point.
In Aronofsky's film, a brilliant young mathematician, Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), believes in several precepts :
(1) that mathematics is the language of the universe (2) nature can be expressed in numbers, and (3) there are patterns everywhere in nature.
Most importantly, he believes that we should be able to perceive and interpret the patterns, to comprehend the language, and that he is on the verge of doing so. Yet, while patterns seem to emerge at every turn, from a swirl of cream in a coffee cup to a seashell at Coney Island, the meanings of these patterns remain maddeningly elusive.
Meanwhile, both a vicious Wall Street henchwoman and a Hassidic Jew approach Max about his work, the first thinking he's about to figure out the hidden patterns in the Market, the latter thinking he can decipher the numerical code hidden in the Torah. Max however has hit an impasse, including crashing his computer, and turns to his mentor for help. Like Max, he too was once a brilliant, cocky young mathematician, but he's had a stroke and now just sits in his apartment playing the game of Go.
And just in case all that isn't enough, Max has paralyzing headaches brought on by an incident from his youth, an incident which evokes Daedalus :
9:22. Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So one day when I was six, I did ... the next day I had my first headache.
Whether physical or mental in nature, Max's headaches are soon accompanied by nosebleeds, hallucinations, and a mounting sense of paranoia, as his grip on reality begins to slip away.
Aronofsky achieves some sense of the disjointed and terrifying world that Max is living in by setting the film in a decaying tenement in Brooklyn, shooting in Black and White, manipulating the film to make it incredibly grainy, actually mounting a camera on Sean Gullette (the actor playing Max) so that on tracking shots we're moving with him but looking right in his face, etc. Some of these techniques work better than others, but all serve to give the film such an unusual look that it is very much its own distinctive world.
But most of all there are the ideas. Max's hubris--his belief that the universe's secrets are lurking just beyond his line of sight or his chain of thought, and even more important, that he in particular has been given the capacity to finally perceive them and that when they are revealed he will be able to handle them--is shared by so many of the great heroes of our culture, from Adam and Eve to Dr. Frankenstein, to Faust, and so on. (Like Faust he even makes a deal with the Wall Streeters in order to get a new, extraordinarily powerful processor for his computer.) The message of the film, as in all of its predecessors, that no matter the quality of the individual--no matter the genius, or the purity, or the ambition--Man is simply not ready to share in these secrets, is so profoundly antithetical to our Age of Reason that it is a pleasant shock to find an artist who's still resorting to it. And, amazingly enough, this mythical lesson is still just as powerful today as it has been throughout human history.
You can't really discuss the end of the film without ruining it for first time viewers. Suffice it to say that the denouement is both shocking and inevitable. This is a movie that not everyone will like--mostly due to the unusual look of the film, Max's sometimes off-putting behavior, and some genuinely disturbing images--but if you stick with it and at least accept the visual style, you'll be treated to a compelling version of one of our oldest, but still most relevant, stories.
GRADE : A+
Movie Review: Provocative, in the most important way
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is powerfully and beautifully subversive. It doesn't just simply tackle the world of INNER space, merging the psychological with the scientific and mystical like its fraternal/spiritual twin THE MATRIX. Nor does it heavyhandedly demand you to make the kind of simple choices that are really nothing more than candy for a mind aching for the nutrients of provocative challenging thought or even, secretly, spiritual crises. (Questions that ignore the relevance of the movie's theme, like "is Max [the main character] really crazy or just a genius? or both?", the way the new Kevin Spacey vehicle K-PAX engenders [is he an E.T., or just a psychotic? Or both?"]. After a while that becomes like "do you think the people in this porno movie are falling in love, or no?"). This movie is powerfully, joyously, triumphantly unsettling and subversive, becuase it reveals the emperor that has no clothes in many of the philosphical questions we ask routinely of ourselves. We ask these powerful questions at parties and during some international crisis, but with a manufactured profundity to hide the degree to which we have exorcised pondering their actual implications from our everyday intellectual and emotional lives. Is there really a God? What is sanity, really? What is the relevance of religion in a post-Einstein/Freudian/Tech stock/Prozac world? What can ancient history teach us about the modern present... We don't really care to have a legitimate answer to these questions because they are now designed to have us continue sleeping before they are even asked, whether outright or cryptically; not to really wake us up. But logical, simple yet scientific questions about the innate structure of reality...the possible high order that defines it and the universe, above and beyond illusion of randomness, duality and chaos...the implications of a world that is really all just levels of energy and their unifying, "harmonic" relationships to human consciousness and being--right down to how we define and express the very concepts (like love, happiness, freedom, enlightenment, reality and yes, GOD) that form the basis of our everyday lives... These kind of questions still frighten us, because you can't ask them without receiving some information that will shock your world, whether the complete answer agrees with your preconceptions, doesn't, or never fully comes. We can argue the existence of God, but what can we say about the existence of the golden ratio, the Fibonacci Series, or Pi? And what do we do if it IS in the Bible and Torah and the architecture of the Pyramids as much as it is in nature?
The movie PI takes this fundamental theme/question of our modern world--*do you have the courage to question your existence, before it questions you?*--and riffs on it like Charlie Parker on the chords of the blues. "Forget the characters and their lives; I'll make them interesting only because bad character development would distract you even more" Aranofsky (the writer and director) seems to say to us. "Let's talk about order vs. chaos, and the proof of both that helps declare the other an illusion. Knowing that, perhaps, only one gives the illusion of the other the relevance and respect that it deserves: making IT the real *reality* by definition. And then let's deal with the implications of believeing in the supremacy or existence of either--or both--to the human mind, and the human heart, considering how virutally anything else we talk about in life is a metaphor for one or the other anyway.
PI is the kind of movie that doesn't just make philosophy fun (removing it from the spoiling hands of many a philosopher). It makes it relevant. The acting is done very well; the filming effect of gritty, harsh, and stark black and white color is very effective. And it is very, very weird. It gets into the mind of a man who is erasing that fine, ever-erased line spearating genius from insanity as enlightenment approaches. This is an important film, however, because of how deeply it moves you. It can even change your way of thinking by bringing up what it does.
If you can name your favorite Twilight Zone rerun in less than five seconds, this movie will become an imporant part of your discography. I put it on par with THE MATRIX as one of the most important science myth films (as opposed to science fiction films) to be made this past decade. It isn't a five star film...but it's close enough.
Movie Review: A disturbing portrait of . . . well, something or other
Summary: 5 Stars
Since I just recently reviewed director Darren Aronofsky's sophomore effort, I figured I might as well review this one too.
I like it a lot myself, but it won't be for all tastes (even for all who like _Requiem for a Dream_). It's bizarre in all the right ways, but if you don't like things a little surreal, you won't care for this film.
The setup is simple enough: Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is looking for 'patterns in pi' -- the famous transcendental number that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and that (like Euler's number e) keeps cropping up all over the place in mathematical investigations of pretty much everything. Max is convinced that if he could grok that pattern (and through it, the underlying pattern of all of nature), he'd be able e.g. to predict the ups and downs of stock prices.
Is he a 'mathematician'? Hardly. We do see some evidence that he's a lightning calculator, but -- despite some brief references to actual mathematics here and there -- Max's own 'investigations' look like the same sort of nonsense long perpetrated by pseudomathematical cranks. He's also subject to really nasty migraines that send him careening into hallucination. And yet -- his mentor Sol (Mark Margolis) suggests that at one time Max _was_ a promising and even brilliant mathematician, and at one point Max's stock market predictions appear to be uncannily accurate.
Overall, though, Sol is on the mark when he implies that Max has gone in for numerology. Somebody else thinks so too, and regards that as a good thing: Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman), a Hasidic Jew who is investigating number patterns in the Torah in order to discern the Name of God. He gloms onto Max and starts teaching him not only about Torah observance (there's a nice scene where the two of them put on tefillin and start to recite the Shema) but also about Kabbalah -- specifically Hebrew numerology, a.k.a. gematria, although the film doesn't use that word. (The gematria stuff is accurately presented but, again, the math is not; at one point Max suggests -- and a rabbi appears to agree -- that the Hasidim have actually tried intoning the phonetic equivalents of every single possible 216-digit number, a feat that, with a hundred people at a time each intoning one name per minute, would have taken them on the order of ten-to-the-208th-power years.)
There's also some corporate entity after Max's secrets as well. So Max, whose 'research' looks to be nothing more than sheer crankery, is nevertheless at the center of a whirlwind of conspiratorial activity for some reason. Is it because he's really onto something? Or is this all just -- a la _Foucault's Pendulum_ -- an echo of Eco?
You probably won't be sure of the answer to that question even _after_ watching the movie -- even after watching it repeatedly. At least, after numerous viewing myself, _I_ still don't know exactly what's supposed to have transpired here. But some people (like me) enjoy that in a movie. (At any rate, the internal resolution of Max's distress works out about the same way on any interpretation of the external events.)
The film was produced on a budget of, I think, about a dollar and eighty-seven cents, so don't be looking for ILM-level special effects here. The whole megillah is brilliantly shot in grainy black and white and backed with a spare, disturbing score by Clint Mansell. Gullette pretty much carries the entire film, with the help of an excellent but very small additional cast.
This is, in short, the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing. It's pretty gonzo and probably not for everybody.
Movie Review: God is a number but the number doesnt exist...
Summary: 5 Stars
A mathematician on the threshhold of madness tries to come up with the "magic" number that will crack the secrets of Wall street. To do this he lives in a "world within a world" of his own where his personal (and almost alive, brings to mind HAL) computer is the size of his room and where he seems to be cabled-in with it as he tries for the breakthrough. But simoultaneously, the number he's looking for seems to be of great importance for a sect of Orthodox Jews who consider it to be the one that will unlock the secrets of god as well.
Metaphysics meet science and science meets insanity in an incredible film that has already earned characterisations that range from classic to cult.
And for good reason too. Shot entirely in black and white and on very low budget "Pi" reminds everyone that independent cinema remains the only true hope for the thinking viewers. The main character (you've never seen him before but you will agree he's a perfect match for the role) is ultra-convincing and the few other characters that appear are carefully casted and compliment the movie as well.
Allthough i'm not aware if "Pi" won any awards for photography i would be shocked if it hasn't. Camera and photography-wise the film is an undisputed masterpiece. The director and crew have done an astonishing job to capture the claustrophobic story and throughout one has the feeling that he's watching this whole thing from up close.
Numerology freaks as well as conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this as it's full of references from beginning to end.
Some have criticised the ending, but think about it: how could you possibly end this film in a way that would "universally" satisfy the audience??? You simply can't. If you would that'd mean that you would have to come up not only with a great film but with the equation to end all equations as well, and i mean, come on, we're asking for a bit too much here.
As i watched it i thought (halfway during the movie) that the end would be critical but eventually i realised that this is besides the point, as "Pi" intends to serve more as food for thought rather than offer answers. It intends to show a stranger's struggle for answers so it could function as a mirror for anyone seeking similar answers too. And it manages that in a very eerie way. It also intends to provoke and create controversy around itself. After all what "Pi" deals with is existentiality, and as such it is bound to ask a lot but not be able to answer everything.
As if everything concerning this brilliant moment of cinema wasn't good enough the soundtrack is a treat too! True, it's not as intimidating as when it came out (thing have moved on a bit since then) but for those that have not discovered the beauties of the electronic scene it will be a chance for them to delve and find out about gems that have eluded them.
This is easily one of the top films within the last 10 years and ranks way high on the list in its genre.What genre is this?
Well how about "science fiction-thriller-social commentary-drama"?
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Movie Review: Excellent Movie, leaves a lot to the imagination.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an intellectually stimulating movie about the protagonist, Max Cohen, a man with a wonderful gift for numbers. Unfortunately, his excellence intellectually is more than neutralized by his emotional instabilities which catapault him into an obsession filled quest to unveil the secrets of the universe held within a 216 digit number. At this point, I have to state that the movie does in fact aim to impress that there "is" a 216 digit number which holds the key to unearthing secrets of the universe (both physical and spiritual). I base this conclusion on the fact that Max stumbles upon this number first, while trying to decipher a pattern of numbers to explain the very alive and chaotic existence of the "Stock Market". The significance of this number is later explained to him by Sol, who in-turn deciphered this number while trying to explain "Pi" (something that has no definitive value). Sol described the number as being the computers realization of LIFE before its own death when faced with a problem with no real solution. As Pi and life ( stock market/relegion/otherwise) have no definitve patterns or answers that can be defined by math/numbers, the presentation of this unsolvable problem to the computer, produces the 216 digit number. The true brilliance of this movie is not in his characters arrival at this 216 digit number, but rather his grasping the significance of this number and how it alludes to human existence and life, yet ironically fuelling him towards his own destruction.
It is difficult to understand the true nature of Max's illness, but based on the drugs he ingests, it would suggest that he is suffering from some acute form of Migraine along with a Bipolar disorder. The aura of an impending attack is cleary displayed with the involuntary twitching of his left index finger just prior to an attack.
The ending of the movie leaves a lot to the imagination of the veiwer and thus with a myriad of possibilities. My take on the climax of the movies is that his obsession with the 216 digit number, his illness(which is worsening based on the increased frequency of attacks, increased need for medications and increased psychosis), his paranoid delusions of persecuation (with some foundation in reality) and his frustration with failure leads him to choose suicide as a better alternative than living. This seems a rather simple ending which leads me to belive that the CONTENT/SATISFACTION with which Max is pictured at the end, unable to appreciate Math the way he used to any longer, maybe because he wasn't trying to kill himself in the first place, but lobotomize himself to the quandries/quagmires of numbers all along. His hallucinations about drilling into a human brain may just have been a prelude to his "escape clause", just in case he needed to remedy his brilliance.