The Ratio of ‘Alpha’ to ‘Pi’

Film review, 1/20/99

Alphaville

Home Vision Cinema

Pi

Artisan Entertainment

When I finally saw the video release of Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (known on-screen, and on the video box, by the Greek letter), it was on the same day I happened to catch Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville on the Independent Film Channel. The two films turn out to be bookends of the modern information age.

Alphaville, as all good film-studies alums know, was Godard’s low-tech response to the popular fears generated by the high-tech advances of the late ’50s and early ’60s. His storyline involved hardboiled private eye Lemme Caution (Eddie Constantine) venturing to a far-off planet where one hyper-rational, central mainframe computer ran everything, and where the display of human emotion was a crime punishable by death. But it was shot on contemporary-modern locations with a small cast, off-the-rack costumes, and no special effects (the voice of the evil computer was played by a throat-cancer patient with an electronic voice-box implant). Godard’s statement against dehumanization was made with rigorously human-scale tools. Since its making, several films have referred to images or plot elements in Alphaville (from Blade Runner to Trouble In Mind to a no-budget ’80s indie called Betaville). But Pi’s the first to both do so successfully and to put a modern spin on the original film’s theme.

Like Alphaville, Pi’s shot in grainy, hi-contrast black-and-white, and utilizes lotsa extreme-close-up cutaway shots of flashing digits–its antihero Max Cohen (Sean Guillette) apparently dabbles in stock-market “day trading” to finance his lonely pursuit of mathemetical keys to the meaning of life. But where Lemme Caution seeks to reclaim human souls from the cold, inhumane hyper-rationality associated with IBM 360-era centralized computing (and visualized by stark, bureaucratic office buildings and harsh fluorescent lights), Max is the ultimate loner-male computer hacker, preferring literal “known quantities” to the chaos of humanity (as visualized by teeming NYC street scenes). Max finds relief from everyday existence’s humdrum disappointments in the burning heat of ultra-logic (literally–he’s addicted to the very intense thought processes that also aggrivate his severe migraines, which he can only partially relieve via massive prescription combos). Like some mid-’80s computer fanatics I knew, he’s devoted most of his small Manhattan apartment to a complex, personally-assembled “kludge” of a computer setup, which he’s even named (“Euclid”). To him, logic isn’t the enemy of life but the heart of its very being. He believes if he can master the ultimate mysteries of math and geometry (which, in his case, include Leonardo’s “magic rectangle,” numerological interpretations of the Hebrew Torah, and the ultimate math-mystery, the unending and unrepeating number at the heart of the circle and known by the greek letter pi), he can unlock the final mystery of–well, if he knew what it was, it probably wouldn’t torment him as much as it does.

Both films have thriller subplots to add on-screen action to their cerebreality. Lemme engages in espionage and chase scenes against the agents of Alphaville’s machine-controlled regime; Max is pursued in the subways and streets by the employees of a Wall Street financier (Pamela Hart) and by a cabal of Jewish mystics; each party seeks to exploit his way with figures for purposes only partly revealed by the film’s end.

Yet near the end, he proclaims to the mystics that they, and he, were mistaken to seek the ultimate truth in a mere number. “It’s not the number–it’s the meaning, the syntax, the spaces between the numbers.” Only after this (and the death of his only friend) does the film’s image briefly switch from stark b&w to shades of grey. Max Cohen understands the temptations of the desire for rational knowledge far better than Lemme Caution ever could, but ultimately reaches a similar conclusion in regards to logic’s frustrating limitations. Max realizes too late, it really isn’t what you know but who you know.

It should also be mentioned that Pi is a tour-de-force directoral debut blah blah blah; but more importantly, it’s a real independent film. It’s not a low-budget, “hip” version of a standard Hollywood formula. Despite the chase interludes, it’s not some commercially-released demo reel intended to show the director’s skill at orchestrating violence or mayhem. Nor is it a Sundance Festival-formula product, full of relatively-affluent WASPs standing around talking about relationships. It’s a real movie about real ideas–something rare in any age.