Pi, also titled π,^{[nb 1]} is a 1998 American surrealist psychological thriller film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. It is Aronofsky's directorial debut, and earned him 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 pi.^{[nb 2]} Like most of Aronofsky's films, Pi centers on a protagonist whose obsessive pursuit of ideas leads to severely self-destructive behavior. However, the strong psychosexual elements of the director's later work are not present.

Plot[link]

Maximillian "Max" Cohen (Sean Gullette), the story's protagonist and unreliable narrator, is a number theorist who believes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers. He is capable of doing simple arithmetic calculations involving large numbers in his head. Max also suffers from cluster headaches, as well as extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and social anxiety disorder. Other than Devi (Samia Shoaib), a woman living next door who sometimes speaks to him, Max's only social interaction is with Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), his old mathematics mentor.

Max begins making stock predictions based on the calculations of his computer, Euclid. In the middle of printing out its picks, Euclid suddenly crashes after spitting out a seemingly random 216-digit number, as well as a single pick at one-tenth its current value. Disgusted, Max tosses out the printout of the number. 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 try taking a break.

At a coffee shop, Max meets Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman), 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 met by agents of a Wall Street firm that are interested in his work. One of the agents, Marcy Dawson, offers Max a classified computer chip called "Ming Mecca" in exchange for the results of his work, which Max eventually accepts.

Using the chip, Max has Euclid analyze mathematical patterns in the Torah. Euclid spits out the 216-digit number before crashing again. 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 epiphany, and passes out. Thereafter, Max appears to become clairvoyant and is able to visualize the stock market patterns he had been searching for. But 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.

Dawson and her agents grab Max on the street, and try to force him to explain the number. They had found the original printout and had been trying to use it to manipulate the stock market in their favor, but as a result, caused it to crash. Although Max is held at gunpoint, Lenny drives by and rescues him. However, Lenny and his companions make similar demands on Max to give them the number. They finally reveal their intentions: they believe the 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 that he has died. Max searches his house and finds mathematical scribblings similar to his own, eventually finding a piece of paper with the number. Driven to the brink of madness, Max experiences another headache and resists the urge to take his painkillers. 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 an illusion. Max stands alone in his trashed apartment. Giving up, Max burns the paper with the number and performs an impromptu lobotomy on himself in the right temple with a power drill to stop the madness.

Later, Jenna, a little girl with a calculator, approaches Max in a park asking math problems. Max smiles and reveals that he can no longer perform complex mental calculations. He observes the trees blowing in the breeze, at peace.

Cast[link]

• Sean Gullette as Maximillian "Max" Cohen
• Mark Margolis as Sol Robeson
• Ben Shenkman as Lenny Meyer
• Samia Shoaib as Devi
• Pamela Hart as Marcy Dawson
• Stephen Perlman as Rabbi Cohen
• Ajay Naidu as Farrouhk
• Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao as Jenna
• Lauren Fox as Jenny Robeson
• Clint Mansell as Photographer

Production[link]

Pi was written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and filmed on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film. It was produced on a sufficiently low budget of $60,000, but proved a financial success at the box office ($3,221,152 gross in the U.S.) despite only a limited release to theaters. It has sold steadily on DVD.

Reception[link]

The film was well received upon its release; on Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 87% 'Fresh' rating based on 46 reviews.^[2] On Metacritic, the film has a rating of 72 (generally favorable reviews) out of 100 based on 23 reviews.^[3] Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing: "Pi is a thriller. I am not very thrilled these days by whether the bad guys will get shot or the chase scene will end one way instead of another. You have to make a movie like that pretty skillfully before I care. But I am thrilled when a man risks his mind in the pursuit of a dangerous obsession."^[4] James Berardinelli gave the film three out of four stars, writing: "[Pi] 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....It probably deserves 3.1415 stars, but since my scale doesn't support that, I'll round it off to three."^[5]

Themes[link]

Mathematics[link]

Pi 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.

Kabbalah[link]

The 216-letter name of God sought by the characters of the film is known as the Shem ha-Meforash or the Explicit Name. It comes from 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.^[6]

The game of Go[link]

In the film, Max periodically plays Go with his mentor, Sol.^[7] This game has historically stimulated the study of mathematics^[8] 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 extremely complex and chaotic world, while Max asserts that patterns can be found in the complexity of its variations.^{[7][nb 3]}

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.^[7]

Soundtrack[link]

Pi launched the film scoring career of Clint Mansell.

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pi

• Official website
• Pi at the Internet Movie Database
• Pi at AllRovi
• Pi at Box Office Mojo
• Pi at Rotten Tomatoes