DeConick A.D

260
THE PI OF POLITICS
Figure 9.1 Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) in π ( Pi ) (1998).
the day he had his first migraine. Now, as an adult, he suffers horribly, with
almost constant, intense head pain.
In the moments when he is lucid, Max is obsessed with his search for
absolute truth, for the mathematical number that turns out also to be
God’s forgotten name. His mentor, Sol, whose own name refers to Sol
the Roman sun god, tells him that his quest is doomed. Max is like Icarus,
who flies too high. He will be burned by the sun’s rays. Sol tells Max that
his obsession with discovering the 216-digit number of absolute truth is
religious hogwash and insanity not fit for a scientist. Max insists that it is
genius and pushes on.
When Max finally becomes consciously aware of the 216-digit number
and figures out that it has been lodged in his brain since he was six and
first looked at the sun, his brain anatomy visibly alters. As his migraines
and visions spin out of control, he takes up scissors and frantically cuts
away the hair from the portion of his scalp where the pain is most intense.
As he stares into the mirror and chops off his hair, we begin to really
wonder about his sanity. Does he plan to scalp himself to deal with the
relentless pain? Or is he a mental case who is hallucinating?
As he removes his hair, we see on his scalp something new emerging,
a bulging artery in the shape of the tip of an arrow. The arterial pathways