Pi (film)

Pi (also titled π), is a 1998 film about a paranoid mathematician who searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.
 * Directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Darren Aronofsky, Sean Gullette, and Eric Watson.

faith in chaos

Maximillian Cohen



 * Something's going on. It has to do with that number. There's an answer in that number.
 * You see the simplicity of the circle. You see the maddening complexity of the endless string of numbers, 3.14 off into infinity.
 * 12:45, Restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of human hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well. Right in front of me. Hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
 * 9:13, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.
 * I'm trying to understand our world. I don't deal with petty materialists like you.
 * 12:50, press return...
 * Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...
 * 10:15, personal note: It's fair to say I'm stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that's where it happens.
 * My new hypothesis: If we're built from Spirals while living in a giant Spiral, then is it possible that everything we put our hands to is infused with the Spiral?
 * If the number's there I'll find it!

Sol Robeson



 * There will be no order, only chaos.
 * Have you met Archimedes? The one with the black spots, you see? You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks — insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife — she's forced to share a bed with this genius — convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density — weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.
 * Number? How many digits was it? 100? 1,000? 216?
 * Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
 * The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe.
 * That is the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math.
 * As soon as you discard scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist.

Lenny Meyer

 * Each letter's a number. Like the Hebrew A, Alef is 1. B, Bet is 2. You understand? But look at this. The numbers are inter-related. Like take the Hebrew word for father, 'Ab' - Alef Bet... 1, 2 equals 3. Alright? Hebrew word for mother, 'em' — Alef Mem... 1, 40 equals 41. Sum of 3 and 41... 44. Alright? Now, Hebrew word for child, alright, mother... father... child, 'Yeled' — that's 10, 30, and 4... 44.
 * The Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it's a code sent to us from God.

Marcy Dawson

 * It's survival of the fittest, Max, and we've got the fucking gun.

Dialogue

 * Sol Robeson: This is insanity, Max!
 * Maximillian Cohen: Or maybe it's genius!


 * Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from our God. You are carrying a delivery that was meant for us.
 * Maximillian Cohen: It was given to me.
 * Rabbi Cohen: It's killing you.


 * Sol Robeson: Certain programs cause computers to get stuck in a particular loop. The loop leads to meltdown but just before the crash, they become aware of their own structure. The computer has a sense of its own silicon nature and it prints out the ingredients.
 * Maximillian Cohen: The computer becomes conscious?
 * Sol Robeson: In some ways, I guess.
 * Maximillian Cohen: Studying the pattern made Euclid conscious of itself. I had to... Before it died it spit out the number. That consciousness is the number?
 * Sol Robeson: No, Max. It's only a nasty bug.
 * Maximillian Cohen: It's more than that, Sol.
 * Sol Robeson: No, it's not. It's a dead end. There's nothing there.
 * Maximillian Cohen: It's a door, Sol. It's a door.
 * Sol Robeson: A door at the front of a cliff. You're driving yourself over the edge.

Cast

 * Sean Gullette - Maximillian Cohen
 * Mark Margolis - Sol Robeson
 * Ben Shenkman - Lenny Meyer
 * Pamela Hart - Marcy Dawson
 * Stephen Pearlman - Rabbi Cohen (final film role)

Quotes about Pi



 * You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers. A movie, by the way, was made — sort of a small-scale offbeat movie — called Pi recently. I think it starts off with a big string of digits running across the screen, and then there are people who get concerned with various things, and in the end this Bible code idea comes up. And that ties in with numbers, so the relation to numbers is not necessarily scientific, and even when I was mentally disturbed, I had a lot of interest in numbers.
 * John Forbes Nash, Jr., in a statement of 2006, quoted in Stop Making Sense: Music from the Perspective of the Real (2015) by Scott Wilson, p. 117