Pi and the clarity before the crash

     The first few lines of the movie did a great job of setting up its premise. In it, Max, the protagonist, states that when he was younger his mom told him not to stare at the sun, so he did it and became blind for a while. It was terrifying for him to not know whether he would ever see again. but with time, he finally regained his sight. Interestingly enough, he is well aware of this connection in the midst of his downward spiral in to obsessive insanity. Later he states (whether this actually happened or if this amendment is just some sort of self-justification trick is unclear) that before he went blind, everything became in focus, and he achieved some sort of clarity.

    This idea is an overwhelming theme of the movie, with the "icarus" story being mentioned more than one time. This pattern of "flying too close to the sun" was even repeated in isolated incidents within the movie before it happened to the main character. In fact one of the things that helped push him into his downward spiral is the bit where the computer spits out the magic number before it fries. According to his mentor, this came as a result of the computer becoming too "self-aware." A connection that is easily drawn to Max's claim to clarity.

    In his obsession, however, Max clearly does not see the overwhelming Irony in his journey. In Descartes's  theory on the "Great Deceiver" we see that through doubt we can obtain that there is a possibility that we are no more than a brain in a vat being poked into simulations of experiences. This idea is manifested literally in multiple scenes where he hallucinates his brain being covered by ants (a representation of his obsession) that causes sensory stimulation with a result of overwhelming anxiety and paranoia, not to mention his chronic migraines. He even pokes his own brain with a pen, causing hallucinations of a train. This idea is also manifest less literally in his consumption of drugs (too many to be justified by his migraine). In other words, Max's brain is indeed in a vat, and he is the one poking it. The Ironic bit is how Max actually thinks that by poking his brain enough resulting in hallucinations and delusions, he might achieve the clarity he is looking for. And yet it is plain to see that he is his own great deceiver. Descartes hypothesized that there is a possibility that the men he sees in the street wearing hats and coats might not be men at all, but robots. If Descartes was in Max's state of mind, he would have convinced himself that they actually are robots.