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Renegade mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), left, and the leader of the
Kabbalah sect, Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkrnan), share a chance encounter.
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7/31
1998
90 Detroit Jewish News
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the world around him. ("My old
girlfriend once said to me that my
films are about a search for God,"
says the filmmaker.)
This brings Max to the attention of
both Wall Street types, who hope he
can predict the ebb and flow of the
stock market, and a group of Cha-
sidim whose own work with numbers
has a decidedly more spiritual bent.
But Max cares little for monetary or
religious rewards.
"Math is Max Cohen's art," says
Aronofsky, which is why he pursues
his ideas with an intense clarity of
vision, even as the world around him
crumbles.
The script went through many per-
mutations before r e aching its complex
final form, and surprisingly, the story's
element of Jewish mysticism was one
of the last things to fall into place.
"Before we had Chasidim, we actu-
ally had Pythagorean monks,"
explains Aronofsky, "but it didn't
quite work."
That was in part because it was dif-
ficult to reconcile the idea of clois-
tered individuals appearing in the grit-
ty urban environment Max lives in.
But the Chasidim, while maintaining
a separate culture with very specific
religious and intellectual pursuits, are
very much a part of the fabric of New
York City.
What brought the Chasidim to
Aronofsky's mind was remembering
aspects of Kabbalah — especially
gematriah — that he'd encountered
during a trip to Israel when he was
18. (In the old city of Jerusalem, he
met Orthodox Jews and got involved
in the Discovery Program, which was
a three-day workshop in which "they
bombard you with Kabbalah and
mysticism," he recalls.)
Gematriah, where numerical values
are assigned to letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, dovetailed perfectly with
Max Cohen's pursuits and also opened
a door for the examination of his reli-
gious background.
"He's a very assimilated American
Jew, sort of a California Jew," Aronof-
sky says.
Max, whose life's blood is numbers,
begins to feel a kinship with the Cha-
sidim through gematriah, and to view
his own mathematical theory in a dif-
ferent light.
But TC is, above all, a thriller, and
what Max has uncovered turns out
be even more significant to the Cha-
sidim than to the Wall Street types
who pursue him. Their Rebbe's insis-
tence that Max isn't the one to utilize
the divine information he has gleaned
from his study of numbers makes him
defensively retort that he "was cho-
sen.
"He does cross a line there, and
becomes a messianic figure," says
Aronofslcy, adding that it doesn't mat-
ter to the single-minded Max that he's
the only one who believes it.
While Aronofsky never pursued
mathematics beyond the academic
requirements, he recently discovered
that his science fiction story inadver-
tently tapped into reality.
"We just got contacted by some —/
real live Max Cohens," Aronof4 said
with some amazement.
"They are working on the same
exact theories that I thought I fiction-
alized. So it just goes to show you, the
world is a really weird place." ❑