Pi (movie)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | π - system in chaos |
| Original title | π |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1998 |
| length | 84 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Darren Aronofsky |
| script | Darren Aronofsky |
| production | Eric Watson |
| music | Clint Mansell |
| camera | Matthew Libatique |
| cut | Oren Sarch |
| occupation | |
| |
π (alternative title: Pi - System in Chaos ) is an American experimental thriller by Darren Aronofsky from 1998 . Production costs were only $ 60,000 , but it grossed over $ 3 million. The film was shown for the first time in Germany on April 8, 1999.
action
The grainy black and white film is about the paranoid math genius Maximillian Cohen, who believes that everything in nature can be understood using numbers . Right at the beginning of the film, he formulates this thought in the form of hypotheses:
- Mathematics is the language of nature.
- Everything around us can be represented and understood by numbers.
- If the numbers of any system are represented graphically, patterns arise. Conclusion: patterns exist everywhere in nature.
He sees certain cycles of nature and the golden ratio as evidence of this . On this basis, with the help of his computer Euclid , he tries to find predictable patterns in the price data of the global stock market, which is a natural organism for him, and in the process comes across a 216-digit number through a computer crash. At first he considers them insignificant. When Sol Robeson, Max ' Go partner, former professor, mentor and sponsor, learns of the 216-digit number, he mentions that he himself had come across a “virus” while doing research on the number π , which issued this number . The more Max delves into the secrets of this number, the more urgently Sol warns him against further investigation and instructs him not to concern himself with it any further. It was the cause of his stroke and ultimately also the reason for him to withdraw from active mathematical research: "It's death!"
During his research Max is regularly plagued by cluster headaches , which lead to total failures - in the course of which his paranoia grows stronger. As the film progresses, Max begins to believe that he has found the key to understanding the universe in the 216-digit number , and his paranoia seems to be justified. Several fanatical groups become aware of his research: a woman from Wall Street who wants to use Max's findings for capitalist purposes, and a group of Kabbalistic Jews who believe the number contains the true name of God - a kind of Bible code from the Torah . According to this group , when a pure soul "pronounces" the name, humanity approaches the Garden of Eden .
The more Max understands the number, the stronger his headache attacks become. He slowly loses control over his life, lets himself be dominated by his paranoia and suffers from hallucinations . To escape his suffering, he finally destroys all traces of the number by burning a note with the number and in another hallucination destroying his brain with a drill . Then he lost his skills.
Reviews
Some critics see π as a mixture of the two classics Eraserhead by David Lynch and Tetsuo: The Iron Man by Shinya Tsukamoto . Aronofsky himself said in an interview with Gadfly Magazine about Tsukamoto:
“I'm a huge fan of his. About two years ago, I was at Sundance and saw his latest film Tokyo biyori. It totally inspired me to go out to make the cyberpunk movie in America. No one has done the cyberpunk genre over here. "
“I'm a big fan of his. About two years ago I went to Sundance and saw his latest film Tokyo biyori there. This completely inspired me to go out and make cyberpunk films in America . Nobody over here has ever dealt with cyberpunk. "
As another possible influence is Robert Wiene's film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seen from 1920.
The New York Times describes the film as a "bizarre and exquisitely paranoid thriller." According to Time Out New York , π is "intelligent enough to torture your brain, with or without drugs."
“The depressing study of a psychopath that draws on the patterns of classic psychological thrillers and processes them experimentally. A film of considerable atmospheric density, the main character of which shows the stages of claustrophobia and schizophrenia intensely. "
effect
Both Welle: Erdball on the album Chaos Total and Jedi Mind Tricks on the album Violent by Design have incorporated some quotes into the lyrics / intros of the songs.
literature
- π. Screenplay & The Guerilla Diaries . Faber & Faber, London / New York 1998, ISBN 0-571-20042-7 .
Web links
- Pi in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Box Office Mojo: Pi (1998)
- ↑ Gadfly Magazine, September 1998. Readable in the online archive .
- ↑ Washington Post, July 31, 1998. See 'Pi': Nothing Simple About It .
- ^ Pi. In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .