By Robert Scucci
| Published
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher was amazed that I understood math at a ninth-grade level. By ninth grade, my teacher was just happy I could follow along with everyone else. By senior year, I was still operating at that same level. I peaked early, and that was that.
So I majored in Literature and creative writing instead because I already knew how to make a budget, balance a checkbook, and calculate the interest on the predatory student loans I’d just signed my life over to. Had I stuck with math, I’d probably have ended up like Max Cohen from 1998’s Pi, a man so obsessed with numbers that they eventually destroy him.
Pi is one of those independent films that makes you start seeing numbers everywhere. It’s like Jim Carrey’s The Number 23, but actually smart. Complex mathematics and hidden codes in nature drive Max toward madness, but it’s his own psychological makeup that fuels the film’s tension. Even without the math, Max was destined to self-destruct.
The Road To Hell Is Paved With 216 Digits
Pi follows Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), a number theorist convinced that math underpins everything. Plagued by severe headaches and hooked on medication to manage the pain, he’s obsessed with finding a pattern in Pi, the infinite, seemingly random string of numbers that forms a perfect circle. A victim of his own genius, Max loses track of time and grows increasingly paranoid as encounters with people who want to use his research for their own personal gain become more frequent.
His mentor, Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), urges him to stop before he ends up like him. Sol once chased the same code, suffered a stroke, and now lives confined to a wheelchair. Lenny (Ben Shenkman), a Hasidic Jew studying mathematical patterns in the Hebrew alphabet, believes God buried a secret code in the Torah. Lenny and Max form a transactional relationship when Max’s computer, Euclid, spits out the same 216-digit number Sol once found; the exact same number Lenny’s searching for.
Meanwhile, Wall Street agent Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart) tempts Max with a high-end computer chip in exchange for his data, forcing him to question his integrity and the purpose of his work in Pi.
The Spiral Is Everywhere
Max’s explanation of the golden ratio and spiral in Pi mirrors the spiral consuming his life. As he begins to see patterns in everything, Sol grows worried that Max’s mind won’t survive his obsession. As someone who peaked in ninth-grade math, I grasp these ideas mostly thanks to Tool’s Lateralus album. The short version is that whether you’re Max or a math-rock musician, you’re chasing divine meaning through the patterns you know in the form of numbers, notes, or rhythms that you understand conceptually, but fail to fully comprehend their true meaning as a mere mortal.
As Max digs deeper into number theory, his body, mind, and spirit crumble. Watching the spiral take hold is terrifying because you realize he’s not fighting a villain, he’s fighting his own mind.
Streaming Pi
A Certified Fresh independent psychological thriller, Pi proves that if you look for something long enough, you’ll find it, whether it’s real or not. It’s also a warning that when you lose yourself in obsession, the answers rarely make sense outside of your clouded, subjective judgment. This low-budget, high-concept masterpiece is a cautionary tale about genius and madness, and it’ll make you wish you’d paid more attention in math class.
As of this writing, you can stream Pi for free on Tubi.
