current issue | main page | infotainment | past editions | special events | classifieds...a-l | classifieds...m-z | feedback!

REEL TO REAL
by Chuc LaVenture
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

pi

This is a very strange movie. There isn't much of a plot and what there is isn't all that intriguing. The story goes something like this. Maximillion Cohen was a boy genius who completed his Ph.D. by the age of twenty-one. He is a number theorist who believes that everything in nature, including all that is created by man, can be defined by mathematics. Additionally, he believes everything in nature conforms to some pattern. Given these assumptions, he begins working on a formula to discover a pattern that predicts the rise and fall of the stock market. Max is an eccentric who lives in a low-rent flat in New York City's Chinatown. He has some sort of seizure disorder that is never explained which seems to cause hallucinations and delusional episodes. His apartment is a fortress with a many locks, and he won't leave his apartment if anyone is on the stairs. His mentor is Saul, a number theorist who has spent his life working on the complexities of pi. Saul tells Max that he believes that Max is spending too much time working on his theories and that he will eventually end up like Saul, disabled from a stroke.

Enter our antagonists. Max's work has come to the attention of some very powerful people in the world of international finance. They very much want Max's formula and they are willing to do just about anything to get it. Max's work also comes to the attention of a group of Cabalists who are looking for the 216 digit number that, when translated into Hebrew, will be the spoken name of God. Max comes close to discovering the formula for his stock market pattern. As he is getting close to his discovery his mainframe blows, but not before it spits out a rather large number, a number that could have been up to 250 digits. Max meets with Saul who tells him to take his mainframe blowing as a sign to take a vacation, but Max is determined. He tells Saul that he is a coward who left his research because he was too close, and that he isn't going to end his research. He meets with the Hasidim he has been talking to and tells him that he might have seen the number for which the Hasidim is looking. He also calls the international finance people to take up the offer of their high-powered computer chip-the chip that Max believes has the power to process the formula that he believes will prove that all things in nature conform to a singular pattern, and the Hasidim believe is the spoken name of God. But Max wants the finance people to leave him alone. He will contact them when he has something.

The conclusion of the movie is interesting. I'm not going to give anything away, but suffice it say that no one comes out of this unscathed. I wish I could give you a good theme, or some kind of reasoning for this movie, but I don't think I can. One might see this movie as a morality play, conceit, greed and obsession being proscribed, but I'm not even sure if that works as a focus for this film.

This film is shot in black and white with many fast-forwarded scenes and disjointed, chaotic music. All of this blends perfectly with the characters and the scant plot. I hope that if any of you get over to Canal Place to see this that you'll E-mail me with some thoughts on the meaning of this film. Although I didn't understand the film, I did leave feeling vaguely disturbed it.

current issue | main page | infotainment | past editions | special events | classifieds...a-l | classifieds...m-z | feedback!