π
Directed by	Darren Aronofsky
Produced by	Eric Watson
Written by	Story: Darren Aronofsky Sean Gullette Eric Watson Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky
Starring	Sean Gullette
Distributed by	Artisan Entertainment
Release date(s)	July 10, 1998
Running time	84 min.
Language	English
Budget	$60,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

π (or Pi) is a 1998 American psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky. The title refers to the mathematical constant π (pronounced [paɪ]). DVD cover or insert scan from the movie π, personal scan, claiming fair use (does not detract from original work, scanned from legal copy, image is of sufficiently low resolution). ... Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. ... Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. ... Sean Gullette (born June 4, 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) is a New York-based writer and actor who first received international acclaim for his role in Darren Aronofskys film Pi. ... Artisan Entertainment was a privately-held independent American movie studio that has been owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, since 2003. ... July 10 is the 191st day (192nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 174 days remaining. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. ... When a circles diameter is 1, its circumference is Ï€. The mathematical constant Ï€ is an irrational real number, approximately equal to 3. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

Production

Pi was written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and filmed on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film. Black-and-white or black and white) can refer to a general term used in photography, film, and other media (see black-and-white). ... Reversal film is photographic film which, when developed, displays an image in its original color and brightness, instead of a negative image. ...

Pi had a low budget ($60,000), but proved a financial success at the box office ($3.2 million gross in the U.S.) despite only a limited release to theaters. It has also proven to be a steady seller on DVD. DVD (sometimes called Digital Versatile Disc, or Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ...

Darren Aronofsky's next film was Requiem for a Dream (which was also sold co-packaged with Pi.) Aronofsky raised money for the project by selling $100 shares in the film to family and friends, and was able to pay them all back with a $50 profit per-share when the film was sold to Artisan. Requiem for a Dream is a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby, Jr. ...

Plot

The film is about a mathematical prodigy, Maximillian Cohen, who believes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers. Utilizing the stock market as his data set, Max tries to uncover patterns with the assistance of his homemade supercomputer Euclid. Max has been plagued with recurring and extremely debilitating headaches since age 6, headaches that respond very little to any medical treatment. Max suspects the origin of the headaches to be related to an accident when he was 6 years old, in which he stared into the sun at such length that "the doctors didn't know if [his] eyes would ever heal." The day that his eyes had healed, Max experienced his first headache (and it is implied that this incident may have caused some sort of trauma, resulting in his mathematical genius). He also suffers from extreme paranoia and some form of social anxiety disorder. As the movie progresses, he begins to believe that he has found the key to understanding the universe, but as he closes in on the answer, it turns out that his paranoia is justified (or depending on your interpretation, that his paranoid delusions have manifested themselves in visual and auditory hallucinations). A number of mysterious people become interested in his research, including a woman from a Wall Street firm with access to powerful new computer hardware, and a group of kabbalistic Jews who believe that the Torah, when represented as numbers instead of letters, contains the true name of God, an example of a Bible code. Eventually Max escapes his torment by destroying his research, then trepanning himself with an electric drill. The last scene of the film shows Max displaying a lack of interest in mathematics, and now when he looks at the sky, he sees it only for what it is. Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, known today as the father of geometry; shown here in a detail of The School of Athens by Raphael. ... A child prodigy, or simply prodigy, is someone who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age. ... The New York Stock Exchange A stock market is a market for the trading of company stock, and derivatives of same; both of these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately. ... In statistics, a data set is a set of data consisting of: a list of research subjects and the data vector associated with each. ... Euclid (also referred to as Euclid of Alexandria) (Greek: ) (c. ... A headache (medically known as cephalalgia, sometimes spelled as cephalgia) is a condition of pain in the head; sometimes neck or upper back pain may also be interpreted as a headache. ... For other senses of this word, see paranoia (disambiguation). ... Social anxiety, sometimes known as social phobia or social anxiety disorder (SAD), is a common form of anxiety disorder that causes sufferers to experience intense anxiety in some or all of the social interactions and public events of everyday life. ... An hallucination is a sensory perception experienced in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. ... Elaborate marble facade of NYSE as seen from Broad and Wall Streets For other uses, see Wall Street (disambiguation). ... This article is about traditional Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). ... It has been suggested that Pentateuch be merged into this article or section. ... At the bottom of the hands, the two letters on each hand combine to form יהוה (YHVH), the name of God. ... Bible codes, also known as Torah codes, are words, phrases and clusters of words and phrases that some people believe are meaningful and exist intentionally in coded form in the text of the Bible. ... 18th century French illustration of trepanation Trepanation (also known as trepanning, trephination, trephining or burr hole) is a form of surgery in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull, thus exposing the dura mater in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases, though in the...

Cast

Sean Gullette (born June 4, 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) is a New York-based writer and actor who first received international acclaim for his role in Darren Aronofskys film Pi. ... Mark Margolis (born 1939 Pennsylvania) is an American actor, who has been making movies since his debut in 1976. ... Ben Shenkman was born September 26th 1968 in New York. ... Ajay Naidu Ajay Naidu (born 12 February 1972 in Evanston, Illinois) is an American actor of Indian ancestry. ...

The game of Go

In the film, Max periodically plays Go with his mentor. This game, now very popular particularly among mathematicians^{[citation needed]}, features a very simple set of rules that results in an extremely complex game strategy. Go is a board game for two players. ...

Mathematics and π explain the ratio problem (?)

While the film's characters make several mathematical "goofs", such as saying

• The Golden Ratio defines a ratio such that a/b is the same as a/(a+b). Actually, the golden ratio refers to a ratio such that a/b = (a+b)/a.

Sean Gullette's character, Max, pursues a legitimate scientific goal (though questionable "scientific" means). As such, π features several references to mathematics and mathematical theories. For instance, Max finds the golden spiral occurring everywhere, including the stock market. Max's belief that diverse systems embodying highly nonlinear dynamics share a unifying pattern bears much similarity to results in chaos theory, which provides machinery for describing certain phenomena of nonlinear systems, which might be thought of as patterns. Unlike in the film, chaos theory does not allow one to predict the exact behavior of a chaotic system like the stock market and, in fact, provides compelling evidence that such predictions are, in principle, impossible. The letter phi Phi (upper case Φ or ; lower case φ, , or ), pronounced fee in Greek and fai as in defy in English, is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. ... Sean Gullette (born June 4, 1968 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) is a New York-based writer and actor who first received international acclaim for his role in Darren Aronofskys film Pi. ... A golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor b is related to phi, the golden ratio. ... A dynamical system is a concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical space. ... A plot of the trajectory Lorenz system for values r = 28, σ = 10, b = 8/3 In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos. ...

Kabbalah and π

The 216-letter name of God sought by the characters of the film is actually widely known and called the Schemhamphoras [1][2] or the Divided Name. It comes from Exodus 14:19-21. Each of these three verses is composed of seventy-two letters in the original Hebrew. If you write the three verses one above the other, the first from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third from right to left, you get seventy-two columns of three-letter names of God. The seventy-two names are divided into four columns of eighteen names each. Each of the four columns represents one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. Hebrew redirects here. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Yahweh. ...

The actual name of God, according to Jewish traditions, is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH or YHVH). This is the name that was intoned in the temple once a year during Yom Kippur, as referenced in the film. What has been lost is not the spelling of the name, as in the film, but the true pronunciation, since words written in Hebrew in the Torah do not include vowels. Furthermore, in the case of the Tetragrammaton, when vowels were used, the actual vowels were replaced with the vowels of the word Adonai to avoid pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, which is a taboo in Judaism. The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (1100 BC to 300 CE), Aramaic (10th Century BC to 0) and modern Hebrew scripts. ... The Tetragrammaton in Phoenician (1100 BC to 300 CE), Aramaic (10th Century BC to 0) and modern Hebrew scripts. ... Yom Kippur (יום כיפור yom kippÅ«r) is the Jewish holiday of the Day of Atonement. ... It has been suggested that Pentateuch be merged into this article or section. ... At the bottom of the hands, the two letters on each hand combine to form יהוה (YHWH), the name of God. ... Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. ...

In addition, it would be highly unlikely that the Hebrew Schemhamphoras would translate into 216 digits in a decimal system. There is no zero in Hebrew numerals and the system does not work as a normal decimal system. The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. ...

Soundtrack

π launched the film scoring career of Clint Mansell. Clint Mansell (born November 7, 1963 in Coventry, England) is a musician and composer. ...

1. "πr²" (Clint Mansell)
2. "P.E.T.R.O.L." (Orbital)
3. "Kalpol Intro" (Autechre)
4. "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" (Aphex Twin)
5. "Watching Windows [Ed Rush & Optical Remix]" (Roni Size)
6. "Angel" (Massive Attack)
7. "We Got the Gun" (Clint Mansell)
8. "No Man's Land" (David Holmes)
9. "Anthem" (Gus Gus)
10. "Drippy" (Banco de Gaia)
11. "Third from the Sun" (Psilonaut)
12. "Low Frequency Inversion Field" (Spacetime Continuum)
13. "2πr" (Clint Mansell)

Clint Mansell (born November 7, 1963 in Coventry, England) is a musician and composer. ... Orbital were an English techno duo formed in 1989, consisting of brothers Paul (born 19 May 1968) and Phil Hartnoll (born 9 January 1964). ... Autechre is an English electronic music group consisting of Rob Brown (born c. ... Aphex Twin (Richard David James, born August 18, 1971 in Limerick, Ireland) is an electronic music artist, credited with pushing forward the genres of techno, ambient, acid, and drum and bass. ... Roni Size (b. ... Massive Attack are a successful and critically acclaimed band from Bristol, England. ... Clint Mansell (born November 7, 1963 in Coventry, England) is a musician and composer. ... David Holmes See David Holmes for other persons with this name. ... GusGus GusGus is a techno band from Reykjavík, Iceland founded in 1995. ... Banco de Gaia is an electronic music outfit from England, formed by Toby Marks (born 1964) in 1991. ... In special relativity and general relativity, time and three-dimensional space are treated together as a single four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold called spacetime. ... Clint Mansell (born November 7, 1963 in Coventry, England) is a musician and composer. ...

Trivia

• One of Sol's pet fish is named for the famed mathematician, Archimedes. The other is named Icarus - the character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun - a fact which is in line with Max's disability, as well as with Sol's name, which refers to the sun (sol being the root of words such as solar). Furthermore, Icarus' foolhardy attempt to achieve the impossible could be considered analogous to Max's own aspirations.
• Max's mysterious headaches are explained pseudo-religiously towards the end of the film, but could also be explained in more medical terms as an extreme case of Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias. Cluster headache, a form of Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias, is often considered the worst pain known to medical science today, the severity of the pain cited by patients to be even worse than unmedicated amputation of a limb. Cluster headache is notoriously difficult to treat.
• The Richard Ashcroft song "God In The Numbers" from "Human Conditions" was inspired by the film.

Archimedes (Greek: ) (c. ... In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus 1566 Icarus, one of the Apollo asteroids Icarus is a scientific journal focusing on studies of the Solar System. ... Cluster headaches are rare, extremely painful and debilitating headaches that occur in groups or clusters. ...

See also

• Pi (the mathematical constant)

When a circles diameter is 1, its circumference is π. The mathematical constant π is an irrational real number, approximately equal to 3. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Pi

• Pi at the Internet Movie Database
• Pi - Official website