Talk:Pi (film)

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Why Black and White?[edit]

π was written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and filmed on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film.

The film was produced in 1998. So why black-and-white? I think it would be good if someone can mention why the producers chose to use high-contrast black-and-white reversal film. --ADTC (talk) 18:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a possible citation with Aronofsky commenting on it: "Matty was brave enough to take on Reversal film, which many of us shot in film school, and its black and white Reversal, extremely hard film stock to expose. We didn't want it to end up looking like "Clerks" and be all gray. We wanted it to be black or white. We were inspired by "Sin City" by Frank Miller -- he just does white scratches into black ink..." Hope this helps. —Erik (talk • contrib) 17:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I interpreted the black and white filming (as well as the black and white pieces in the game Go) to represent binary, further representing logic/predictability and underscoring the theme of mathematical patterns.
There's also the idea of perception: he talks about vision, staring into the sun, etc. . .and it could interrelate with that as well.
74.46.63.6 (talk) 03:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Migraine[edit]

I'm not sure, but there is written about hallucinations, and headaches. I'm a migrenic myself, and I find the hallucianations in this movie, similar to the hallucinations during very strong migraine strike. I would change this little fragment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.201.36.36 (talk • contribs) 15:14, 14 July 2009

Max's medication list is consistent with migraines. In particular, he lists caffergot suppositories.

2001:470:8917:9:6CBE:6D1A:4EDA:E875 (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They are cluster headaches, as the article states. Aronofsky himself said they were based on a friend's experiences with cluster headaches, which can suicidally (literally) worse than migraines. As for medications, there is an intersection of treatments for both, such as immediate inhalation of pure oxygen. This link discusses both cluster headaches and their (infernal) inspiration in the movie: www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvvenq/the-worst-pain-clusterheads-have-headaches-that-feel-like-a-hand-in-their-brains JohndanR (talk) 06:49, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The number 216[edit]

I have not seen this film, nor have I read much about it, but I saw the number 216, and I remembered that number as a third power. It is 6 raised to the 3rd power... 6*6*6... three sixes... 666... the number of the beast... . I wonder if this is just a coincidence? 68.200.98.166 (talk) 00:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Coincidence? Helll no! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.32.63 (talk) 06:42, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Number with 216 digits[edit]

I've been trying to figure out where the number that's been posted on the page comes from and why it's considered related to this article. But I've found nothing. Who is Massimo Nardotto? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.90.31.57 (talk) 01:33, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. Apparently he's just the guy who inserted the number into this article (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pi_(film)&diff=prev&oldid=300586618). Seems to be some kind of self-promotion. It has nothing to do with the number shown in the film, which is completely different (and has BTW actually 218 digits, if I am not mistaken). While the number in this article is mildly interesting (there are some kind of fibonacci seqences in there, if you replace double digit numbers their digit-sum), it has nothing to do with the film, therefore I remove it. --89.56.1.232 (talk) 00:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Since you ask... Looking at that edit, there are nine sequences of 24 numbers that follow a clear progression. The first two terms in each sequence are the same digit repeated, from 1 to 9 for each of the sequences. Subsequent terms are derived by adding the preceding two terms and, if the result is greater than 9, summing the digits (always returning a value from 1 to 9, since none of the sequences start "0 0" - a degenerate case).
For any such sequence with starting values a and b (each a digit from 1 to 9), the values at each step will be as follows:
step 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
a 1 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9
b 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9 1
Trivially, the digits of any integer greater than 0 that has been multiplied by 9 will reduce to 9. And adding 9 to any integer will not change the value down to which its digits reduce. Therefore you can see that the sequence will always repeat from the 25th step since (a+9b) will reduce to a and (9a+b) will reduce to b.
For the sequences that start with the same two digits, the 24th value will always be 9, after which the sequences repeat. So the sequences in that edit show the 24 digits that make up these sequences before they repeat. As it happens, 24×9=216. But this is concidental since using a different base other than base-10 will lead to a different number of sequences of different lengths.
However this has absolutely nothing to do with the film that this Wikipedia page is about, and the text of that edit was quite rightly removed. Note also that I have nothing whatsoever to do with the user that made that edit.
-Stelio (talk) 16:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I removed it again. Sequence removed included here for posterity, also for the benefit of anyone needing to recognize it again (in order to remove it) brain (talk) 20:40, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The true 216-digit sequence is (Naturalis Veritas, the end of the history, Massimo Nardotto, 2007): 1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9 2 2 4 6 1 7 8 6 5 2 7 9 7 7 5 3 8 2 1 3 4 7 2 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 4 4 8 3 2 5 7 3 1 4 5 9 5 5 1 6 7 4 2 6 8 5 4 9 5 5 1 6 7 4 2 6 8 5 4 9 4 4 8 3 2 5 7 3 1 4 5 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 6 6 3 9 3 3 6 9 7 7 5 3 8 2 1 3 4 7 2 9 2 2 4 6 1 7 8 6 5 2 7 9 8 8 7 6 4 1 5 6 2 8 1 9 1 1 2 3 5 8 4 3 7 1 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

I confirm that this source is not notorious. The information in itself may be pertinent and true, but there's no notorious and verifiable source for that. I don't really know who Massimo Nardotto is in real-life but I know that he's often trying to use Wikipedia as a tool of auto-promotion and/or auto-congratulation. For those who speak French and who'd be interested in his attitude, you can read this discussion between user Nardotto and me on his profile talk page of French Wikipedia. --TwøWiñgš Talk to me 16:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Page Title - π[edit]

I firmly believe the title of this page should be π (film). That is, after all, the true title of the film. Does anybody know how to change a page title? Thanks! Armonkny (talk) 06:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Move?[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was not to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 10:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pi (film) → π (film) —

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Jenny Robeson[edit]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I never found any evidence that Max loved Sol's daughter. I thought it was the Indian chick next door? Fullverse —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.39.184 (talk • contribs) 19:53, 28 March 2010

Section on Go[edit]

While Max and Sol play Go, Aronofsky deliberately focuses on the placement of stones by each player. Sol places stones in the preferred manner of veteran Go players using his fore and middle finger whereas Max places stones like you would an American Checkers piece. Perhaps this has deeper implications about how Aronofsky feels about the conversation at hand or characters at large. I'm not one to decide, perhaps Wikipedia is not the medium to discuss the topic at all. I figured since the Go wiki page devoted a small blurb about how to "correctly" place stones, it might be of some relevance in the description here.

Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.143.16 (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This was discussed before here.--– sampi (talk•contrib•email) 19:13, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

little mistake[edit]

..that someone should fix

in the last plot paragraph it says "Later, when a girl with a calculator comes to the apartment asking math problems" -- I think the little girl (his neighbour, not just one random kid) approaches MAX in the park.. [A] 10:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ariel ALB (talk • contribs)

Also mentioned in this section is that Max "reveals" he doesn't know the answer. After seeing the film, I am inclined to say Max "claims" not to know the answer to the calculations. The "peace" he's experiencing could be attributed to his accepting that, even though his assumptions may be true, he is content not knowing or understanding everything. The exchange with Rabbi Cohen shows this, I think.KRam41 (talk) 06:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The number ...[edit]

This is OR, and not for the article, but I thought you all might be interested.

I guess I've got a little Max Cohen in me, because as soon as I saw that 218 digit number, I noticed some patterns, and started playing around with them. I determined that:

  1. the difference between two consecutive digits is significantly smaller than expected for a random or unstructured sequence;
  2. but a difference of zero (i.e. a repeat) is significantly less common than expected (in fact the chance of this few repeats is about 2 in a million);
  3. the difference between two digits spaced two apart is significantly smaller than expected for a random or unstructured sequence;
  4. but a difference of zero between two digits spaced two apart is slightly more common than expected;
  5. digits typed with the left hand are more common than those typed with the right hand;
  6. looking at pairs rather than digits, some pairs are far more common than expected by chance alone, and others less so. The high likelihood ones mostly contain the digit '2', and a couple are mirror images of each other.

All of these phenomena are easily explained if the sequence was generated by someone striking the number keys at random. I would say they used the keyboard top row rather than the numeric keypad. The typist was probably not a touch typist. -- 202.63.39.58 (talk) 11:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Like most of Aronofsky's films, Pi centers on a protagonist whose obsessive pursuit of ideas leads to severely self-destructive behavior. However, the strong psychosexual elements of the director's later work are not present."
I feel like these two sentences are overkill. It could be argued that the first sentence does not apply to 'most' of his films. And other than Black Swan, which of his films is psychosexual?!— Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin496 (talk • contribs) 05:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Devi, Max's friendly neighbor with whom he is in love."[edit]

I dispute this statement because it's not even really true. There's no evidence to suggest Max is in love with Devi or that he even likes her (he barely makes eye contact with her). He's a socially awkward person around pretty much everyone in the film and that's common behavior among genius minds. I'm going to delete this, unless someone objects... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.5.76.24 (talk) 03:35, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aronofsky's Films...[edit]

"Like most of Aronofsky's films, Pi centers on a protagonist whose obsessive pursuit of ideas leads to severely self-destructive behavior. However, the strong psychosexual elements of the director's later work are not present."

I feel like these two sentences are overkill. It could be argued that the first sentence does not apply to 'most' of his films. And other than Black Swan, which of his films is psychosexual?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin496 (talk • contribs) 05:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Berardinelli Misquoted[edit]

The article quotes Berardinelli as saying the film "Pi" should be rated 3.1415. The quote's reference (Berardinelli, James, "π (Pi)," see http://www.reelviews.net/movies/p/pi.html ) actually states that the rating is "3.1416," which is the properly rounded value of pi to four decimal place. Noah Spamoli (talk) 03:32, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So fix this. :) Debresser (talk) 16:35, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assumptions[edit]

In the plot/synopsis part of the article, I think it would be nice to state (as Max does periodically in the film) Max's assumptions:

  • One. Mathematics is the language of nature.
  • Two. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
  • Three. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.
  • Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature.

What do you guys think? KRam41 (talk) 06:58, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@KRam41:
This would be a great addition indeed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.130.29.155 (talk) 20:48, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Paranoid schizophrenia[edit]

Instead of writing "... as well as extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and social anxiety disorder", one could simply write "... and suffers from paranoid schizophrenia" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Felix Tritschler (talk • contribs) 18:16, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Felix Tritschler: While this was an old request, I admit having wondered this myself. However, none of the existing sources discuss the movie in the context of psychosis or schizophrenia. While the Combustible Celluloid reference does mention schizophrenia, it is in another context, that of movie making, in an interview with the director. No matter how obvious, to add this conclusion we'd have to also find a supporting source. It could even go in the Themes section if we can support it with sources, but not otherwise. That said, a lot of the existing article is not well referenced. —PaleoNeonate - 21:14, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Title clip is wrong[edit]

The digits of pi are wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OosakaNoOusama (talk • contribs)

Which digits and how are they wrong? Jim1138 (talk) 07:31, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kabbalah[edit]

Below are a few links to interviews with Aronofsky where he talks about this particular element of the movie. It might be good to include how he drew from his own experiences with Judaism and in Israel and how seriously he took the subject's presence in Pi. ...But the links look like mirrors of long-dead sites and magazines which conducted interviews when he was still a smalltimer. I can't in good conscience add a link to Tripod or Myvideostore.com, but if anyone can find better sources...

--Rhododendrites (talk) 03:42, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Touch (TV series)[edit]

Those of you ever saw Fox's 2012-2013 Touch (TV series), with Kiefer Sutherland and Danny Glover, may recall its similar premise of competing conspiracies seeking a mentally handicapped math savant with a world-changing secret; in this case, an autistic 11-year-old boy under his widowed father's care. – •Raven  .talk 05:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Website Plagiarism When It Came Out[edit]

It's a story that seems kind of lost to time now but maybe is still interesting to people. But when this film came out it it had a pretty nice looking interactive website and the film makers were lauded for how they were using the internet to market the film. The Blair Witch Project website was another from the same time that was being praised for this - like it was this huge deal, these small films using the cheap internet to promote themselves successfully. Anyway, the funny thing with the Pi website is that after not too long it was discovered that the entire designed was plagiarised, just completely ripped from another site. Basically they just changed the images and the text. And that became a big story. And the other interesting thing is the site designer, the guy who ripped it off, was the star of Pi. He later ended up apologizing, admitting he did wrong. 123.3.87.17 (talk) 21:20, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Plot Summary assumes everything is real[edit]

I have strong doubts that the sequence with the wall street agents and the Rabbis is suggested to be real in the movie. It seems to me that they could just be part of Max' hallucinations as it is frequently suggested that he has very sophisticated hallucinations, for instance when he believes to be touching a brain on the floor in the metro.

I also doubt that Max survives the drilling of his head given the ugly splashing of blood that emerges. The final scene could be a possible alternative ending.

If there is evidence, for instance from interviews with the director, for the hypothesis that all these elements are considered to be real, it should be provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.130.29.155 (talk) 20:53, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for speedy deletion:

You can see the reasons for deletion at the file description pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:52, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Better source needed to make the claim that the film "strongly suggests" Max is paranoid schizophrenic[edit]

1. Linking to a medical journal about schizophrenia doesn't make the case that this film has schizophrenia as a theme. A citation for this should come from the film's creator, or a reputable analysis of the film.

2. Speculation about which events were diagetically real (and not hallucinations) should not be be used to support schizophrenia as a theme. Schizophrenia is a specific mental illness with a whole host of symptoms and specific behaviors. Hallucinations and vivid dreams, someone seeming to be there one moment and gone the next, these are all phenomena with multiple explanations.

3. The visual language of Pi doesn't leave much ambiguity about which events are diagetically real and which aren't. Even deep into the film, hallucinatory or dreamed moments are distinctly fantastical (a disembodied brain on the subway steps that summons a train when prodded with a pen). Hallucinated moments are also proximal in time to Max's episodes

4. The things max goes through are corroborated by reliable parties. Max's one-time mentor very probably approached the same breakthrough Max makes in this film, and believes it was the cause of his stroke. It is implied that returning to the pursuit is what finally killed him. What this tells us is that in the world of Pi, this number, this idea, whatever it is, actually is dangerous to the mind. Max appears to handle it a little differently, probably because of his prior exposure to some kind of mathematical clarity from his sun-staring episode as a child, which leads me to...

5. If Max had Schizophrenia, it would have been identified by the numerous doctors and psychologists he's had to see in order to get the numerous prescriptions he's constantly cycling through. Max is a thoroughly examined person. He's past the age where most schizophrenics have had the initial onset of the condition.

6. The film already gives us a cause for the way Max is. He stared into the sun as a child, and saw the spiral. He updated his program after talking to Kabbalists, the computer became slightly self-aware (as implied by Sol) and the number it spat out after that is the key to some truth too profound for the human brain, and the closer Max gets to the nature of what he glimpsed that day as a child, the more his mind recoils in horror. It may be pure science-fiction mysticism, but film analysis is not meant to find more realistic explanations for on-screen events than the movie offers. It would be more realistic for the Lord of the Rings trilogy to be a hallucination by a human Gandalf, but that's not how speculative fiction works. It is necessary to analyze a story on its own terms.

7. Looking at the film as a series of delusions and hallucinations makes it more boring. Any film in the world can be speculated to be a dream or a hallucination. Taking anything that seems magical or special and dismissing it as, "I guess he was just crazy" makes it pointless to analyze films at all. The Wedding Planner could have bee J-Lo's dream for all we know.

I'm picking nits here, but the section opened with "strongly suggests". It's not impossible that Max could be intended to have schizophrenia, but with this amount of evidence, you could say the same thing about almost any other character in any movie who daydreams. It is not a strong suggestion. It is a possibility, and a weak one at that. Unless Aronofsky or someone else has come forward to say Max has schizophrenia, I hope the other people who keep track of this page will agree with my removal of the section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.192.204.44 (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trepanning[edit]

Is there a reliable source that supports the article's claim that the procedure with the drill is trepanning, as opposed to, say, lobotomy or cingulotomy? Ibadibam (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

First ever film to legally be made available for download and streaming on the Internet?[edit]

The 'Release' section originally claimed that this was the "first ever film to legally be made available for download on the Internet". The provided source did not remotely make reference to this and (needless to say) failed verification. Finding the claim quite interesting, I went hunting for a legitimate source, and found this WSJ article stating that Pi was "the first film sold by download". Digging a little deeper, I found a book stating that "SightSound [sold the] first movie on [the] Internet as PPV (Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, 1998)", and a NYT article stating that Pi was streamed "in a pay-per-view window through Sightsound.com".

As it stands, the WP article lists all three sources and states that "Pi was the first ever film to legally be made available for download and streaming on the Internet". What do we think of this? The sources just say that it was the first film to be sold as a download (WSJ) and PPV (book), leaving the possibility that some other film was legally available for download and/or streaming earlier, but was just not sold. In fact, the latter is quite plausible if you look at the book, which lists several platforms that hosted films before SightSound.

I think the article should read: "Pi was the first ever film to be sold as a download or pay-per-view on the Internet. On the website Sightsound.com, the film was available for purchase as a download, as well as streaming in a pay-per-view window." — Preceding unsigned comment added by ComeAndHear (talk • contribs) 00:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Since no one objected, I have made the above changes. ComeAndHear (talk) 01:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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