A fascinating number theory mystique paranoia cyber punk thriller with
some body horror too, and director and scriptwriter Darren
Aronofsky made his feature film debut with a bang. Next, he made the
Masterpiece "Requiem for a Dream" (read more about this
film on my Cult & Classics page 1) in 2000, and after that, surprise
.... Not, he was swallowed by the Big Garbage Factory and he
lost his indie edge.
This great film though was filmed stylishly in grainy black & white
by the fine cinematographer Matthew Libatique, work for which
he was award nominated (and he has been awarded and nominated various
prizes for most of the Aronofsky films he worked on).
This indie low budget movie was made on a 60 000 USD budget.
It certainly looks like the world we live in, the physics,
the universal machinery, could be defined mathematically, and the math
genius
in the film, the recluse Maximilian Cohen, Max, thinks there are patterns
to be found everywhere in nature.
The
old US Artisan DVD edition
Max (Sean Gullette) lives in a small apartment in China
Town, New York, stuffed with computer equipment. He believes the Global
Stock-
market is also an organism, a natural organism, and with a pattern to
be found.
He's a number theorist and he tries to graph various series of numbers
to find the pattern. His friend Sol (Mark Margolis, if you've seen
Brian De Palma's gangster masterpiece Scarface you won't forget him
as the Columbian drug syndicate killer) an older man he plays Go
with and also a number theorist, has studied for 40 years and searched
for patterns in Pi.
Behind everything could be a 216 digits code, and Max is close to finding
it, but he's suffering from very nasty attacks of migraine and
hallucinations and he's on his way to a burn-out. Also, he's "contacted"
by a jewish ortodox man, Lenny (Ben Shenkman) a member of
a Kabbala sect who's also looking for the 216 number code, but he's
looking for it in the Torah and he thinks it's the true name of God.
If that wasn't bad enough for seriously strained Max, he's also harassed
by some corporate goons that wants the code for making money
on Wall Street. Will Max find the code and did the old man Sol actually
find the code when studying Pi ?
This Blu-ray presents the film in a 1.66:1 ratio and
with a DTS-HD Master stereo 2.0 english audio with english subtitles,
b&w, region B.
Extras: Two audio commentaries, one with director and scriptwriter Darren
Aronofsky and one with actor Sean Gullette, Deleted scenes,
Behind the scenes montage, Theatrical trailer, original trailer and
a Music video (the same extras as for the old DVD edition)
