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viewed April 24, 2000 on video

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Visually stunning and ultimately annoying film about one man's solitary quest to predict the ways of the world through mathematics.  The washed-out black and white look effectively gives the story its stark, paranoid vision of New York through the eyes of lonely Max, trying to find the numeric code of truth through a half-dozen hypotheses plugged into a towering computer system.  The angry young genius is already too familiar a trope for most filmmakers, but the math serves as a fresh battleground for self-suffering male posturings.  

However, some of the film's conceits are hard to swallow: I wonder what would possess this supposedly altruistic savant to prove his predictive powers by forecasting stock market quotes -- did he expect that he would be left to calculate in peace, instead of being sought by a conniving Wall Street type with greed brimming in her friendly voice?  Why could he just predict baseball scores -- he could have at least had some fun trying.  But fun isn't what he is after -- with his constant headaches and general unfriendliness to the world, he has much higher things on his mind than enjoying life.  

However, in the end, when he does learn to lighten up, it feels more like a cop-out than a resolution -- a Hollywood spin on a New York crisis of being.  Also, with Max running from both the Wall Street moneymongers as well as the Hasidic cabalists who think he has the numeric code to find God, it seems the film is seeking not so much the answers to life than an escape from the fates of most New York Jewish Nerds.  Given a choice of NYJN films, I much prefer the organic beauty and attention to human detail in Judy Berlin than this mind-numbing urban nightmare of misanthropy.

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