<p align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">Jordan Pinion</span></p>
<p align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">11/9/13</span></p>
<p align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">HUMA 1302-007</span></p>
<p align="RIGHT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">TCP4</span></p>
<p align="CENTER"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Piposter.jpg" width="219" height="369" align="BOTTOM" border="0" /></p>
<p align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">Pi</span></p>
<p align="CENTER"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"><i><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Piposter.jpg">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Piposter.jpg</a></i></span></p>
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">Name: <i>Pi</i></span></p>
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">By: <i> </i>Darren Aronofsky</span></p>
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">Date: 1998</span></p>
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> <i>Pi </i>by Darren Aronofsky is not only a psychological thriller, but also a surrealist masterpiece. It perfectly captures the spirit and feel of the modernist's take on cinema (breathing new life into the genre), but does so while provoking a scientific mystery that has captured the minds of modern scientific society. <i>Pi</i> should be preserved for its stunning use of surrealist techniques, in addition to its dark cautionary message of forbidden knowledge.  </span></p>
<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">Its the mid nineteen nineties, the United States is fairly business as usual, President Clinton starts receiving sexual harassment charges, Chris Farley overdoses on opiates, AOL is still a thing, and Putin starts his maniacal climb up the political ladder. “With the U.S. Economy booming under President Bill Clinton and the cold war finally over, many Americans experience peace and prosperity in the nineties.” (Holmlund) That being said, “terrorism” is on the rise, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">with recent events including the Oklahoma bombing and Al Qaeda upstarts. All of this paired with mixed trust for the current leadership here at home. Production for <i>Pi</i> began in 1996, amidst this backdrop of dark foreboding.</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> The 1990s was a great decade for independent and surrealist cinema. “... independent films captured hearts, engaged minds, and invaded Hollywood: by decade's end every studio boasted its own 'art film' affiliate.” (Holmlund) Part of the reason why not only this film, but its genre and style did so well during the decade, is because they were so different from the norm of the time. The more popular genres tended to be action, horror/thriller, family friendly and feel-good romances.</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> <i>Pi </i>is especially innovative in its filming methods, heavily using surrealist concepts and applications. “Surrealism was the first literary and artistic </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">movement to become seriously associated with cinema, though it has been a movement largely neglected by film critics and historians”(Kovacs). Shot in black and white (also unusual for the time period), in and of itself gives way to a surreal feeling of being in a dream. The time line of the movie is often unpredictable, and includes many examples of disturbing or otherwise shocking images. This is amazing, especially when considering the laughably small filming budget (a sparse $60,000)(IMDB).</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> Public reception of <i>Pi</i> was generally good. It even received decent praise from Roger Ebert as a thriller. “I am not very thrilled these days by whether the bad guys will get shot or the chase scene will end one way instead of another. You have to make a movie like that pretty skillfully before I care. But I am thrilled when a man risks his mind in the pursuit of a dangerous obsession”. (Ebert) <i>Pi</i> went on to earn Aronofsky the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival (kind of a big deal), among others.</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> If it is at all possible, <i>Pi </i>may be more popular now than it was upon release. Current aggregate cinema polling (Rotten Tomatoes) has <i>Pi </i>at 87%. That's an average rating of 3.8/5 from over one hundred thousand user ratings. And while many inconsistencies have been found within the movie (forgivable considering the budget), this film's mystery still proves quite thought provoking, even to our greatest scientific minds.</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> This has to be my favorite movie of all time. As a computer science major, I am obligated to find beauty in perfect mathematics. Some people like oil </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif">paintings of lily gardens. Me..., I dig fractals. The golden rectangle, golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence, whatever name tag it wears, is to this day one of the greatest mysteries of mathematical and scientific theory. Stephen Hawking once said, “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. Similarly, many aspects of the golden ratio express fundamental mathematics, while some appear where there is no clear reason other than to create and express beauty”.</span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"> What is most significant thing about <i>Pi</i> for future generations to be aware of, is its message that all knowledge comes at a price, and that if too zealous in its pursuit, we stand to be swallowed whole by an answer we are not even capable of understanding. </span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">Holmlund, Christine. "American Cinema of the 1990s."</span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium"><i>Project MUSE</i></span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">. Rutgers University Press, 2008. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. &lt;http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780813545783?auth=0&gt;.</span></span></span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="font-size: medium">Kovacs, Steven. </span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="font-size: medium"><i>From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema. </i></span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="font-size: medium">London: Farleigh Dickenson UP, 1980.</span></span></span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">Ebert, Roger. "Pi."</span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium"><i>All Content</i></span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">. N.p., 24 July 1998. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. &lt;http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pi-1998&gt;.</span></span></span></p>
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<p align="LEFT"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">Hawking, Stephen. </span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium"><i>A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes</i></span></span></span><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium">. Toronto: Bantam, 1988. Print.</span></span></span></p>
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<span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif"><span style="font-size: medium"> Stephen Hawking's genius insight into the universe, as only he can tell it. It is no secret that Stephen Hawking's above average intelligence gives some credence to the mysteries surrounding Pi.</span></span></span>
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