"Pi" Review

They say there is a fine line between brilliance and madness. Which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. See, as a society we possess standards of thought, actions and social interactions. It is when something goes against these societal norms that we become defensive and start insulting it and attacking it because, whatever it is, it makes us feel inferior or uncomfortable. But once we label it as madness, it no longer is relevant. It devolves into the illogical thought of a lunatic and we feel secure once again in our routine of our lives. “Pi” is a film that is merely about madness and paranoia. It doesn't deal with the concept of an idea changing a person or society, but merely a man who can no longer find a logical answer in the place where beforehand could find only logical answers.

The film follows the story of a brilliant mathematician named Maximilian Cohen. Max believes in three things: (1) that mathematics is a universal language, (2) that nature can be expressed and explained in numbers, and (3) that if you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge and you can therefore predict anything. Including something like, say, the stock market? Yes, yes, indeed.

The “code” to predicting this pattern Max discovers, is a 216 digit code. However, Max isn't the only one searching for this elusive code. A group of Jewish scholars believe that the Torah is a complex text in which all the letters represent certain numbers. They also believe somewhere within the text is a 216 letter word which spells the true name of God. He is also be vigorously pursued by a powerful Wall Street firm that wants more than anything else that code he is trying to discover. This, coupled with an ever-advancing madness, drives Max to the brink.

What's interesting in Max as a character is that he doesn't desire the code for any material purposes. Throughout the film he narrates segments and in almost every segment in which he is narrating he restates his beliefs, as if he is trying to remind himself why he is doing what he's doing in the first place. So then, why is he doing this? To simply know. So that he can finally be at ease with the otherwise unpredictable world surrounding him. Max takes solace in the sanity of numbers because he himself cannot seem to find any.

What's so wonderful about most of “Pi” is that Max seems to be caught in a loop: He is afraid of the world because it is unpredictable, so he tries to find a code to make the world predictable, however, he cannot seem to find the code, so then the world is once again unpredictable. If the film would have kept on with the cyclic elusiveness of the code, Max's madness would have made sense. However, Max discovers the code, and at this point he seems to be furthest from reality. Why? If this code is supposed to ground him, why is his mind most scattered once he uncovers it? Perhaps “Pi” thought it would make itself a smarter or more artistic film by letting Max go off the deep end, all it really does though is confound the story. There seems to be some insinuation that Max is mentally sick and that he cures himself somehow. However, the film does not allow itself to develop this idea enough.

On the level of a film, “Pi” ultimately fails due to not allowing itself the room it required to develop its ideas to their best potential and randomly inserting madness where solace should have been found. However, it succeeds in the realm of an experience. Sure, the ending doesn't make sense when you start to think about it, but it terms of a process I sincerely doubt you'll find many other films like "Pi"