𝜋 is the work of a failed conspiracy theorist. Obviously, there are much worse things to be than that – most conspiracy theorists, like most dictators, are actually failed artists, regardless of whatever job they consciously pursued. In this film, Maximilian Cohen (Sean Gullette)is a neurotic, alienated, lonely young man obsessively trying to find the ultimate pattern he believes is present in mathematics. The plot of the film is, essentially, that he finds it – the true name of God as represented by a 216-digit number. This works as a simple framework to hold up a display of emotion.
Co-writer/director Darren Aronovsky works his Jewish heritage into the story; Maximilian is Jewish, and his search for the true pattern embroils him in a hidden society of Hassidic Jews. If the movie were concerned with the practical reality of conspiracy theories, it would be about antisemites (most real-life conspiracies end up coming back to Jewish people in one form or another). Ironically, by focusing so tightly on one aspect of Jewish culture, Aronovsky makes the film more universal; undistracted by racism, we can focus on the basic principle of trying to make patterns out of a confusing universe.
Maximilian is young and angry – distinct from old and angry. Gullette plays him as constantly twitchy; bursting with an unfocused energy and reacting to everything, even when that reaction isn’t spoken. I like that the movie plays him as consistently afraid of everyone; he only mentions being a private person once, but he’s hesitant and nervous around everyone, even openly friendly people like Lenny (Ben Shenkman). Conspiracy theories are the illusion of control; conspiracy theorists are defined, psychologically, by a desire to feel powerful, or more accurately a fear of feeling weak. Certainly, I’m frequently disappointed by real-life conspiracy theorists when I ask them what their ultimate goal is and they tell me “For everybody to know.” When I ask them what they hope to actually do that they can’t do, I get the rhetorical equivalent of blank stares.
Maximilian’s desire to know – to find a pattern for the universe – is really a desire to have an organised inner life. The thing about crazy beliefs is that they really do make it easier to make decisions; astrology, for example, is really a mystic psychology to make it easier to react to someone acting brashly, or at least to find a way to forgive them as you live in the same world. I understand that ritualistic behaviour is very good at giving one a sense of control over the world, even when you don’t believe in the ritual itself. With no inner locus of control, Maximilian looks for external expressions; he becomes infuriated when he discovers his mentor Sol (Mark Margolis) is at least a little full of shit, just trying to be comfortable in the world, and as the movie goes on, his violent actions and poor temper come off as a way of asserting control.
If the movie has a fault – and this is a fault that comes from the creators being too young to tell the story they’re trying to tell – it’s that it falls just short of really interrogating Maximilian. One of the extraordinary things about revisiting it is seeing how great the performances are; how grounded and human the people around him are, and how this sells that these people have lives and histories outside Maximilian – that the world exists outside his own head and neurotic obsessions. Its failure is that it doesn’t quite get to how Maximilian can live in that world with them.
This doesn’t undermine the aesthetic qualities of the film. If its purpose is to show, cinematically, the emotional experience of being a conspiracy theorist, it achieves that above and beyond. Neuroticism is a difficult emotion to convey in cinema simply because most people don’t want to be neurotic. Power is incredibly easy, being a feeling you can get drunk on; realistically, neuroticism is something where you really have to work to make it cool. For Aranovsky, this is done through fast montage; most notably, the repetition of Maximilian taking his pills, something he’d come back to Requiem for a Dream.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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High fantasy for people what who have to work for money.
"There are other things than smart." / "Yeah, those are not smart."
Year of the Month
Well, it's not realistic. I suppose it's socialist.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Futurama, Season Fourteen, Episode Ten, “Final Ending: The Last Conclusion”
An okay episode – one that doesn’t stand up to the dozens of times this show has ended for good – but saved entirely by the funny ending.
Dracula
Specifically, a ballet version. The creatives were disgustingly young – apparently a basis for all ballet – and this has a youthful exuberance; it reduces the cast to the absolute minimum (no Van Helsing, no Renfield) and makes Dracula himself a tragic figure, starting off with his death and rebirth on the battlefield, and it has musical references that are enthusiastic and sometimes either a little too obvious or a little too misused (my partner didn’t like the use of “Dance Macabre”). I enjoyed the melodrama of it all, and my favourite was the use of the Sisters (rebranded here as the Spirits).
Happy Endings, Season Two, Episode Thirteen, “The St Valentine’s Day Massacre”
“Do I have the softest skin or do I not? The wink makes it unclear.”
“And if the sex is crazy on a regular day, imagine what the VD sex will be like!”
“No, we’re not bumping you because we’re not Howie Mandell.”
“Hint: they ripped him dick to taint.”
“They’re all sixty-nine dollars.”
“Uh, no! The spa package happens to be more expensive.”
“We’re still having brunch tomorrow.”
“No they’re not.”
“No, they’re not!”
“I’m standing right here, guys, it only works when you’re on the phone.”
“Totally my fault that you hit me in the face.”
“That place is harder to get into than insert obvious joke here.”
“Never had a cavity. Never had plaque. Except for that plaque they gave me for never having plaque.”
“That’s a pretty sweet plaque plaque.”
“Let’s face it: no one has ever had a friend in town.”
“JFK once called her a real Chicago slut.”
“Why are you always so proud of that?”
“It’s Camelot, bro.”
“Better hope there’s not a black light at that party.”
“The guy I sell my grey water to is around here.”
“Oh David, are those for me?”
“Nope!”
“After being mistaken for a whore, I’ve realised something.”
“That your grandma was a whore.”
“You know, the doctor said he’s surprised you’re… alive.”
“Fourth wind!”
“You spent forty-five minutes taking photographs of your Game Genie for an eBay auction!”
“You must feel so stupid right now!”
“I double-booked. You, and this pizza.”
“So you took Grant for granted.”
“Oh god. That made me sad. When you said that.”
“I feel like I’m always swimming upstream in a current of your ex-boyfriends. It feels like I’m a gay salmon swimming for my life in a river of bears.”
“More of a cub, but…”
Jesus, I hope who ever wrote that line got promoted.
“People love my abreeves! They’re cute!”
“He also said he hates when I say ‘amahzing’, but I’ve barely said that at all this season!”
“You mean winter?”
“Yeah, it’s more of a summer word.”
“Hey! Ross! Rachel! Phoebe! Fat Joey!”
“Don’t patronise me, Monica.”
“And, you know, since Dennis Farina is straight…”
“It’s gonna take you forever to get there, but at least it’ll smell better than Max’s limo.”
Primetime – I like the aesthetics, with Oppenheim using quick cuts and a grimy look akin to 2000’s video and network TV, and Pattinson and Gisondo are giving some career best work. (Alex Winter has a small part as well and is heartbreaking.) The more I think about it, however, the more I don’t think this has anything new or provocative to say about To Catch A Predator, and the script gives short shrift to too many different elements. I got what I was expecting which isn’t always a good thing to say about a movie.
I am really hesitant to go see this and you’re outlining why — I already know To Catch A Predator is reprehensible evil shit, I’ve known that for 20 years, and I have a hard time seeing what else there is to see here.
I’ll say this: (1) Pattinson is going full Cage here and his sheer commitment is great, and (2) we complain constantly about no more That Guy’s and this movie is chock full of them. (Creed Bratton pops up and is deeply unsettling.) Otherwise…eh.
This movie is an unflinching portrayal of societal evil: eh
This movie has a ton of Guys: now we’re talking!
Wake Up Dead Man — the best of these movies although that might not be saying much. The very good is O’Connor, by far the best protagonist of these flicks, but this is offset by the suspects being by far the worst crew, not only are they relatively subdued (no fun stuff like Kate Hudson in Glass Onion) but they also have no real reason to be there the way the previous evil rich family or evil rich friends did, they’re props in a setting. And this points to the real problem — Rian Johnson is trying to seriously engage with faith and forgiveness (and O’Connor helps him a lot) but he doesn’t have the juice. Blanc is his avatar and his big choice at the end of the movie is exactly what a character criticizes a few minutes earlier and Blanc denies, a condescension disguised as a compliment. And thematically, Johnson also winds up agreeing with the psychotic religious zealot who kicks this whole thing off. A weird failure is still better than the glib bullshit of the previous movies, though.
Death On The Nile (2022) — hilarious how this is both expressly woke and contains Russell Brand and Armie Hammer. Johnson to his credit bites off more than he can chew, Branaugh adds his own bullshit to an already-sound recipe, WWI prologue and lost love nonsense along with fake Sister Rosetta Tharpe performances before the film even gets to the damn Nile. Love is the theme, how terrible and sad it all is, and Branaugh makes a real bullshit addition that leads to subtraction at the end in order to drive this point home. Boo fucking hoo! Drastically inferior to the original on the merits (the CGI snake vs the 70s one drives this home immediately) and insulting in its faux-profund amor.
Always Sunny, “Frank Marries A Corpse” — love does not last! This feels rusty at times (and because I am an irregular watcher of the show the cast’s age/work done is more noticeable) but the ending is fantastic, the cutaway and then cut back to the grotesquerie had me hooting. Better is the non-alcoholic beer one, Kaitlin Olson really going for it sexual harassment-wise, and the Gilligan’s Island one is great, classic insular Gang insanity.
Duel — drove six hours on the interstate, what better time to watch this? Some funny stuff with how emasculated Weaver is (and the census guy on the radio at the beginning is amazing, a background monologue of pitch-perfect whiny superiority) and how this is also on him, he can’t relate to anyone and everyone out on the road is weird and unsettling, I had a big laugh at the dude who whips Weaver’s ass after Weaver smacks his sandwich. He really liked that sandwich! But the chase is the goods and that truck is perhaps the best vehicle prop I’ve ever seen (sorry George Miller!) — the rusty and grime, the grill that Spielberg has followed through six decades of movies (Indiana Jones would have no chance against this), the heavy and oddly shaped trailer all adding up to a machine of pure menace, the conceit of never seeing the driver doesn’t feel like a gimmick because what else do you need for fear here? Interesting early Spielberg, he has some close-ups that feel more B-movie in their intensity than he normally gets but his blocking and action are already impeccable, and his sadism is present too. Richard Matheson’s script gives nothing away and this feels like the real Twilight Zone: The Movie, a man drives into inexplicablity and doesn’t drive out.
Love the implication with the tags hanging off the truck that the driver’s done this before. Terrific movie.
Live Music – a trio of weird punk bands on Friday night: Cowtown (brand of weird: Devo), Mumbles (brand of weird: screaming) and Hard As Nails (brand of weird: synths). One of those gigs where everyone seemed to have at least SOME technical problems but it was still a good time. Slow and folky on Saturday with local slowcore / “king of misery” Daudi Matsiko who had a great guitar tone and treated us to a preview of the songs he’s working on for his new album, I really like it when an artist is trying out brand new stuff for the first time. We also got Quincey May Brown who played the harp and had some very specific stream-of-consciousness lyrics that I reall dug, and Float, another slowcore-leaning local who I’ve seen a bunch of times with band and solo, they have a gift for writing songs that feel timeless. Good combo of rowdy and gentle gigs.
Bird Box – looking for something horror-leaning and easy-going on Sunday night, decided to finally watch this one that I remembered people being very briefly but intensely obsessed with back when it came out. I guess it wasn’t technically a full-on Quiet Place rip-off due to the timelines involved but it really feels like one. The cast are decent but the writing is pretty weak, the ending was sweet enough to charm me a little though even if it relies on an eye-roll level coincidence that really didn’t feel necessary or earned.
Wooooooooooo live music! Woooooooooo weird AND slow!
Elementary, “High Heat” – Two people are murdered and then cremated. One of the victims was a private eye of the sort Sherlock abhors, but who seems to have been onto something in what he was investigating. So we get the murder mystery, and we get Sherlock interacting with the head of a PI association that Sherlock finds helps water down the good name of private investigators. The mystery has the worst red herring the show’s down to date – some quickly rejected nonsense about Chernobyl! – and has a pretty unbelievable resolution. The stuff with the PI association is more interesting because the head of the association agrees with Sherlock that reform is very much needed. David Corenswet is a rare example of a famous actor being the killer, only he wasn’t even a little famous (or memorable) back that. Dan Lauria is very good as the head of the PI association.
What did we play?
More Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which continues to remind me why I’m generally more interested in indie gaming (the Ubisoft “everything is a currency” house style is a bit grating to me) but is also a nice sprawling fantasy world to get lost in from time to time. The combat is satisfying too. Feels like a game I might get bored with and give up before the end but hey, it was cheap.
I love the concept that a conspiracy theorist attempts to logically impose an all encompassing pattern upon the unsettling asynchronicity of chaotic events in order to subdue the disorder of his or her inner life: Logic, and its processes not as a description of the world but as a neurotic, and even psychotic, symptom. In short, I need to see this again.