In which our hero talks poorly of the movie Pi and throws in a spoiler for good measure

[mothwentbad]

Yeah, this isn't about math. This is about numerological wankery. You might like this movie if you're not a mathematician or if you'd ever consider taking the Bible code seriously for five seconds. For the rest of you, this movie should make you want to... well, drill yourself in the temple, like at the end of this movie.

Comments

[cyranothe2nd]

This movie raged me too. Total woo.

[cdk]

That is exactly what it made me want to do. Before I even got to the scene.

In a way, it's a kind of meta-foreshadowing that has never been equaled.

[mothwentbad]

Then a little kid walks up to you with a calculator.

"Hey mister, have you seen Pi?"

"Yeah. I really like that movie."

[mothwentbad]

I mean, they COULD make a movie about the frustrations of actually being a mathematician. But the first 15 minutes of it would consist of people asking the protagonist what she studies and then acting like it had been a rhetorical question four seconds later when she starts to try to answer it.

Actually, I should make that movie. It will be called, "What Do You Study" Is Not a Rhetorical Question. No, Seriously. What's Wrong With You? I Don't Really Care What You Do For a Living Either, But At Least I Don't Prank You About It and Imagine Myself To Be Making Polite Conversation.

...that could be shortened somehow. Hmmmm.

[mothwentbad]

...I hate you.

[theswede]

I kind of enjoyed the movie until the main character started separating number order and syntax. Yes, despite the grating woo. But at that point, I just couldn't close my mind to the horror of it, and the experience turned painful.

I expect it would have done so sooner if I hadn't prepared myself with a sizeable amount of single malt before turning it on.

[mothwentbad]

I would need double malt to make it that far.

[theswede]

*slap*

[mothwentbad]

:-O

What?

[langostino]

I think you're pretty badly misunderstanding the film. It's about the main character's paranoid schizophrenia, not about math. The film takes no explicit view on whether the numerology is right or wrong; it's clearly wrong, so there's no need for the film to say so. Perhaps you could fault the film for the naivete of assuming a general audience will catch on to that, but I think it's completely wrong to fault the film for being wooey. It's just got an extremely wooey main character.

t's about the main character's paranoid schizophrenia, not about math.

[bec_87rb]

Thank you.

[cdk]

So when characters in the film claim to have successfully manipulated or predicted the stock market, the audience is expected to say, "That cannot happen, the main character must not be understanding them correctly"?

[langostino]

I treat basically everything that happens in the film as being from the main character's perspective. He believes they've manipulated the stock market; this is presented as reality. Same with the Bible code dudes who are trying to hunt him down. Without this conceit, the film would lose probably all of its salience. We have to have access to his paranoia in order to empathise with him.

I think of this the same way as I think of the magic in The Illusionist. It's presented as paranormal, and only at the end do we find out that all the tricks are in fact illusions. Frankly I like Pi better for not having that explicit it-was-all-just-smoke-and-mirrors-after-all moment at the end, though I think one could argue the scene on the bench with the calculator kid is a very subtle hint in that direction.