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DVD Tuesday: Magic Numbers — Pi over 23
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks in Movie Talk!
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Mathematicians live in a black and white world of absolutes and infinitely reproducible results, while mystics deal in ambiguity and magical thinking, and never the twain shall meet. Except, of course, when math becomes so theoretical that the two melt into one mind-blowing mass of golden proportions and lucky numbers. Nearly 10 years before Jim Carrey got tangled up in The Number 23, this week's DVD Tuesday pick pitched camp on the numerical border between razor's-edge rationality and complete lunacy. Darren Aronofsky's super-low budget Pi (1998) was a knockout debut, and if he hasn't yet delivered on its promise (Requiem for a Dream (2000) is a highfalutin' "Just Say No" PSA with style to burn and The Fountain (2006) is a flat-out mess), the film itself looks better than ever.
Mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) specializes in number patterns, the bigger the better. He's looking for the sequence of digits that will lay bare the order of the world (or life, the universe and everything, in which case it's 42). A true believer in the purity of numbers themselves, he only wants is to be left to the calculations that are slowly driving him out of his mind. But Max's theoretical investigations have attracted the attention of two diametrically opposed, equally fanatical sets of seekers: a ruthless group of financial analysts looking for a way to game the stock market, and a sect of orthodox Jews convinced the true name of God is hidden in a 216-digit number buried somewhere in the Torah.
Shot in stark black-and-white and driven by Pop Will Eat Itself alumnus Clint Mansell's hypnotic score, Pi vividly evokes the chilly horror of being trapped in an unraveling reality where no one and nothing is as it seems. Aronofsky does paranoia right, but also understands the way personal obsessions can reflect larger cultural anxieties: that's why Pi resonates as strongly today as it did when it was new.
Things to consider:
Numerology is to academic mathematics what astrology is to astronomy: What does that mean, and is it true?
Many films try to find a visual way to depict states of mind: Why is that so hard to do, and what films have done it well?
Phrases like "do the math" and "it doesn't add up" are rooted in our cultural convictions about numbers. What are the underlying ideas behind those statements?
Previous DVD Tuesday blogs:
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also: This week's new DVD releases
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Mar 5, 2007 6:15 PM
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As someone who has studied mathematics extensively, I honestly have to say that I do not like Pi at all.
First off all, it is clear that no mathematician was consulted for it. The number of errors in their math is astounding, and some of them are really stupid. The most glaring of which is that they use the wrong letter to represent the golden ratio (they use θ, not φ ). This is something a mathematician (even a bad one) would have spotted instantly and corrected. Hell, look it up in any encyclopedia and it will say that. There are a large number of other errors too, most just as stupid.
This might sound like nit-picking, but these things really do matter. If they are making a movie about maths, get the maths right. What would you think about a movie about the film industry that repeatedly claimed Scorsese directed Apocalypse Now? The errors are that stupid, and they totally blow all credibility the movie is trying to establish about their mathematics out of the water.
As if that wasn't enough, they bring out all of this numerology stuff. This is something that makes a mathematician fuming. There is absolutely no higher truth in numerology, it is the worst kind of trash pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo there is. The thing is, pure mathematics holds so many great truths, and so much beauty that most people will never see! What they see instead is movies like this and Number 23 which has some damn fortune-cookie wisdom about some "universal truth" and how to unlock it. It is absolute garbage.
Now, one might use the argument that that's not what the movie is about, that the movie is really about one mans mind that is disintegrating. That's all well and good, but why bring in the numerology aspect at all? History has proven over and over that math, pure math, real math, can drive a person can totally transform minds and lives and can transcend reality more than any other discipline! Kurt Gödel probed the depths of infinity and truth itself, and he payed for it with his sanity. Evariste Galois frantically wrote down some of histories greatest mathematical discoveries on pieces of paper, the day before he was killed in a duel at the tender age of 21. Srinvasa Ramanujan (the basis for the Will Hunting character) would work for thirty hours straight without sleep and then collapse at his desk. He had no formal training in mathematics, yet he is likely one of the most gifted natural mathematicians of all time, and he could do things no one else could even touch. And of course, everyone knows about John Nash. There are no shortage of stories here! And then to have one of the few movies that really is supposed to be about math start discussing numerology like it is anything other than complete trash??? It really makes a mathematicians blood boil.
I am, however, a movie-lover in addition to a mathematician, and on that level I can sort-of understand what he is trying to do. It is an impressive feat, especially for $60,000. At a symbolic level, the way the cinematography represents the dissolution is marvelous to look at. However, it is impossible for me to get past the part about the mathematics. So few movies are able to deal with this subject. A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting does a decent job of it, while Proof avoids any hint of real maths completely.
The shame is, Pi was independent enough and intellectual enough that it could actually have made a decent job of representing real maths, had it really tried. But it didn't, and here we are. It's a real shame.
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Mar 5, 2007 7:36 PM
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I think Oskar does a good enough job of illustrating how mathemeticians look at numerology the way astronomers look at astrology-as da bunk. I would only add that, as a person who spent a lot of his young life reading Greek myth, history and, to a lesser degree, philosophy, that it is a shame how math has been separated from philosophy at least in the way it is taught here in the U.S. I might have taken a greater interest in math (and been better at it) if my teachers had also connected me more with Pythagoras and his way of thinking about the universe and life when they were trying to drum his theorem into my head.
I recognize and respect the beauty of numbers that Oskar talks about. I can also see how spending a lot of time dealing with its infinite minutiae (among which is the nature of infinity itself) could drive a person bonkers. I night also say that one might have to be a little off kilter in other wys to have the mental room for such exercise but Susan Sontag would say that there is no relation between insanity and genius. At least I think she said it. I had a tough time getting through her stuff too. I thought I understood some of what I read until a theosophist friend set me back on my heels one day.
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Mar 6, 2007 2:44 AM
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Look, if they made a documentary about the movie industry and claimed that Scorsese directed Apocalypse Now, that would be a problem. But if they made a fictional account of the making of that film, they could say that Uwe Boll directed it and I wouldn't care. It doesn't erase history. It becomes someone else's art and I don't want to see their hands tied by reality.
And, hey, I would kill to see a movies about Kurt Gödel but I am not so constrained by my mathematical-religious beliefs that math errors would bother me for a movie like Pi. It's not really about the math. It's about obsession and I think that came through.
The movie deals with the fanstastic and the dreamy workings of an obsessed mind. So to me, it doesn't matter if the math is correct or if numerology is brought into it. I think that could even be an interesting subject for a whole movie... The Number 23 notwithstanding!
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Mar 6, 2007 12:11 PM
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achyfakey - I get what you are saying, but the thing is that Pi pretends to say something deep and have real insights into the world and philosophy of mathematics. But to do that, the mathematics in it needs to be real mathematics, otherwise it loses all credibility.
What if the poker played in Rounders had been completely bogus? What if Jarhead had mixed up sergeants with corporals? What if Field of Dreams had gotten every thing wrong about baseball?
If you are going to do a movie that deal very specifically with a certain subject, and especially if it claims to say something profound about it, you need to show that you actually know what you are talking about.
I can understand why this doesn't matter to most people, since these seem like mere details. But they make a huge difference when you know better.
As an aside, one thing the movie does get right is the game Go. I loved that they featured Go, because it is a game that is truly loved by mathematicians (remember that it was featured in A Beautiful Mind as well? When they are students, Josh Lucas kicks Russel Crowes ass in it). That's a detail that really adds to the mathematical credibility of the movie. It's a shame that there are so few of them.
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Mar 6, 2007 1:04 PM
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Let's say Field of Dreams was made in some country where they have never even heard of baseball. Let's say they get EVERYthing wrong. In fact, they are playing kickball instead of baseball! As long as the movie has emotional resonance, and that is what that film is all about, it would not matter a whit.
I never thought Pi said anything deep about mathematics but about our relation to mathematics, or, at least, one man's insane relation to it. And there's the difference for me.
If the director says that in the vision of his movie, 2 + 2 = 5... then 2 + 2 = 5.
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Mar 6, 2007 1:17 PM
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If the director says that in his version of the movie, 2 + 2=5...then 2 + 2=5
Whew...thank God H and R Block does my taxes.
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Mar 7, 2007 3:15 AM
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