PI Darren Aronofsky 1998 - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages This paper will discuss question number one of the instructions stated that is a central theme that suggests looking at the ‘face of God’ can only be done by verbalizing a string of numbers.
A central theme in the film which discusses the face of God is the theme of Kabbalah. Kabbalah refers to an esoteric discipline, method or school of thought (Huntley 1). Sean Gullette, in Pi, acts as Maximillian Cohen. He is a paranoid mathematician looking for a number to unchain the patterns set up in nature. Max uses his homemade PC named "Euclid" to investigate these arithmetical patterns. The 216-letter phrase of God sought by the actors of the film refers to as the Explicit Name or the Shem ha-Meforash (Huntley 1). The name comes from the book Exodus 14:19-21. Each of these three bible verses is composed of 72 letters in traditional Hebrew. According to the film, if a person writes these verses in boustrophedon form, then the person gets 72 columns of 3 letter names of God (Huntley 1). Boustrophedon form means that one verse is above the other, the first from right to left. Then the second verse is from left to right and the third is from right to left.
The nature of the Divine, according to Pi, prompted kabbalists to foresee two aspects of God. The first aspect is that God is totally unknowable, transcendent, limitless and simple. The second aspect is that God’s manifestation revealed his persona of which He creates and aids mankind (Huntley 1). The film speaks of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof, which means that God that literary has no limits. Of the unfriendly Ein Sof, nothing can be understood. The second feature of Divine emanations, nevertheless, are available to human awareness, vigorously interacting throughout physical and spiritual existence, reveal God immanently, and are tied up in the life of humans (Huntley 1).  ...Download file to see next pagesRead More