Celebrating Pi Day with Aronofsky’s Pi

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I think every person who develops a serious appreciation for film as an art form at a young age will latch onto a specific director whose success coincides with their newfound passion for film. That director for me was Darren Aronofsky. I can distinctly remember being shown the opening scene from Requiem for a Dream (2000) in my high school video editing class and deciding right then and there that I needed to see it in its entirety as soon as possible. I was blown away by the unique look and feel of the movie once I finally got to watch it, and I was determined to track down and watch all of Aronofsky’s feature films. That was pretty easy at the time because Aronofsky only had one other feature film in his oeuvre other than Requiem for a Dream, and that was Pi.

Released in 1998, Pi was Aronofsky’s directorial debut. It was filmed on a minuscule budget of about $60,000 with an additional $68,000 in post-production costs. It was shot on 16mm black and white film, and Aronofsky employed a number of cost saving methods (some of which may not have been totally legal) to get the film made for as cheaply as possible. It’s basically the platonic ideal of a low budget late-1990s indie film.

The plot revolves around a brilliant mathematician named Max Cohen (played by Sean Gullette) who is attempting to devise a formula to predict what will happen with the stock market using his computer (which he names Euclid). I know what you’re wondering: what does this movie have to do with pi? Well as Max is trying to unlock the key to predicting the stock market, Euclid spits out a strange 216 digit number just before crashing. Max discusses this number with his mentor, a man named Sol (played by Mark Margolis) who had once come across the number himself while researching pi before suffering a stroke. Whatever this number is, it holds some sort of significance that is desired by everyone from Wall Street to the Hasidic Jewish community.

If that sounds like a weird premise for a movie, then let me assure you that it is much more bizarre than that. Max also happens to suffer from intense headaches, paranoid delusions, hallucinations, and one or more personality disorders that he is constantly popping pills to get under control. The only people in his life who seem to care about him are his neighbor Devi (played by Samia Shoaib), a young girl in his apartment complex named Jenna (played by Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao) who enjoys asking him to do complex equations in his head, and the aforementioned Sol. The other two prominent characters Max interacts with are a Hasidic Jew named Lenny (played by Ben Shenkman) who believes the Torah is a string of numbers forming a code sent by God and a ruthless agent of Wall Street named Marcy (played by Pamela Hart) who wants Max to give her the key to predicting the stock market.

The film is an anxiety driven fever dream as Max attempts to understand the 216 digit number spit out by Euclid while struggling to separate his paranoid delusions and hallucinations from the very real danger that seems to be lurking right around the corner from those who want that knowledge for themselves. The film also takes a huge swerve into the realms of science fiction and possibly even the supernatural as it goes.

If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m a fan of this film. I love the quick edits, the disorienting cinematography, the grimy setting, and the believable characters existing in this unbelievable situation. I also love the score composed by Clint Mansell that seems to propel the story forward. The opening credits sequence accompanied by the techno theme perfectly captures the feeling of the movie and what the audience can expect.

So why am I talking about this little indie film from almost thirty years ago? The obvious answer (especially if you read the title of this piece) is that Pi Day is this week! If you’re not familiar with this very important holiday, it takes place every March 14 because the date can be written as 3.14 in the day/month format which are the most significant figures of pi (π) when represented in its decimal format. Should I define pi? I guess I should define pi if I’m going to be talking about Pi and Pi Day. The most simplistic way to define pi is to say that it is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter represented as a mathematical constant. Its decimal places never end and never become a permanently repeating pattern. The phrase “squaring the circle” comes from the mathematical impossibility of being able to construct a square with the area of a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with a compass and straightedge. It’s an irrational number that has fascinated people for literally thousands of years. There’s your brief math lesson for the day.

The point of all of this is to say that I can think of no better way to celebrate Pi Day this year than by watching Pi. In even better news, A24 recently acquired distribution rights for the film and has put out a remastered version on both digital and Blu-ray. If you’re curious about watching it, you can now do so with the best looking version to date! You can tell I want people to go see this film because I have shown incredible restraint by not spoiling any of the huge twists and turns in the film or even described any of the most visually stunning sequences. Hopefully you find it as entertaining as I do when you watch it to celebrate Pi Day this year.