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United States, 1998
U.S. Release Date: 7/10/98 (limited)
Running
Length: 1:25
MPAA Classification: No MPAA Rating (Violence, profanity)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Cast: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, Stephen
Pearlman, Samia Shoaib
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Producer: Eric
Watson
Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky
Cinematography: Matthew
Ubatique
Music: Clint Mansell
U.S. Distributor: Artisan Entertainment
p, the letter, is a character in the Greek
alphabet roughly equivalent to the English "p." p, the mathematical notation, is commonly used to
represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. p, the movie, is Darren Aronofsky's debut feature (and
the winner of a directing award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival), an
independent science fiction thriller that combines questions about God and
infinity with the personal struggle of one man to regain control of his life.
p is actually the second low-budget,
no-effects science fiction movie I have seen this year. The other, Hilary
Brougher's The Sticky
Fingers of Time, will be released by Strand Releasing during the Fall. I
must admit to liking the approach embraced by p
and Sticky because the monetary limitations have spawned creative scripts
with unique solutions. Without ILM and a $100 million budget to fall back upon,
film makers who venture into this arena must be prepared to truly engage the
minds of their audiences instead of relying upon a DTS sound system and state of
the art visuals to generate oohs and aahs.
p is the story of Max Cohen (ably portrayed
by Sean Gullette), a computer geek with a genius for mathematics. Socially, Max
is completely inept. Aside from occasionally showing off his arithmetic
abilities to a girl who lives in his apartment building, he avoids all human
contact, including any interaction with his attractive next door neighbor (Samia
Shoaib), who shows an interest in him. Max lives by three basic principles: (1)
mathematics is the language of nature, (2) everything can be represented and
understood through numbers, and (3) there are patterns in nature. His objective
is to use his home-built supercomputer, Euclid, to analyze the patterns in the
financial markets to predict the exact performance of every stock. During the
course of his studies, he encounters a mysterious string of 216 digits, and,
when a Jewish numerologist (Ben Shenkman) becomes aware of this, he confides in
Max that "the pattern in the Torah is 216 digits," and this discovery may hold
the key to unlocking God's true name. Max, who doesn't believe in God, is more
interested when his mentor (Mark Margolis) reveals that he once encountered a
"bug" of 216 digits when he was investigating p.
Max's mathematical brilliance comes at a price, however: he has frequent,
debilitating headaches and seizures that send him into a bizarre state of
consciousness. During those episodes, he encounters people who stalk him then
disappear, and, on one occasion, he discovers a brain lying on the ground in a
New York City subway station. The key to Max's genius and pain appears to be a
mark on his skull, and, perhaps in order to eliminate the one, he must sacrifice
the other.
Although the plot of p is eccentric (even for
a science fiction effort), Aronofsky's message is actually quite simple: life
does not fit into neat patterns, and complete control is impossible. Oddly, this
is also the underlying premise of the two Jurassic
Park movies, proving that certain concepts are universal. However, the
central theme is only one of many fascinating subjects tapped into by the
screenplay. For example, Max's quest to use numerical patterns to model every
aspect of the universe reveals some interesting quirks about the Hebrew
language. (In Hebrew, all letters have a numerical equivalent. The number for
"father" is 3. The number for "mother" is 41. 41+3=44, which is the number for
"child.") In addition to all of its intellectually-stimulating aspects, p also works as a character study of an obsessed
individual whose single-minded goal blinds him to everything else, including
health, friendship, love, and even sanity.
Aronofsky elected to shoot the film in black-and-white, which lends a
dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings. p transports us to a world that is like yet unlike our
own, and, in its mysterious familiarity, is eerie, intense, and compelling.
Reality is a fragile commodity, but, because the script is well-written and the
central character is strongly developed, it's not hard to suspend disbelief. As
the movie draws to a conclusion, it perhaps becomes a little too ambitious in
trying to unify all the great questions of existence. At that point, p slides with only limited success into an exploration
of metaphysics and spirituality. Nevertheless, I prefer movies that take risks
like this, even when they're flawed, to those that try for a safe,
formula-driven resolution. So, while I didn't necessarily buy everything that
transpired in the final fifteen minutes, I was surprised by much of it, and
Aronofsky never lost my attention. For anyone who wants a movie to feed their
intelligence and imagination more than their eyes and ears, p is a solid choice. It probably deserves 3.1416
stars, but since my scale doesn't support that, I'll round it off to three.
© 1998 James Berardinelli
From movie-reviews.colossus.net
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