Spoilers
Some of this may just be biblical parallels, which are pretty common, but anyway...
These are some of the similarities between Pi and The Last Temptation of Christ that just screemed out at me when I watched them.
The first image we see is Jesus lying down on the ground, immediately before he gets a migraine headache.
Max, the main character of Pi, gets migraine headaches throughout the film, the first of which is in the first scene.
Walking with god
Max walks along the beach of Coney Island, and notices King Neptune searching with his metal detector for his trident.
Jesus walks along the beach, with a feeling that someone is watching him, receiving messages from God and wishing they would stop
Ants
Jesus tells Judas that when he looks into that little black eye of an ant, he sees the face of God.
Notice the ants in Pi, hanging around the computer chips that are calculating the name of God.
Man and God
In the end of The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus, on the cross, is tempted by the devil to be a man; to live with a wife and family, and to have a good and quiet life. When the vision is over, Jesus sees the end of his life, in which Judas chastises him “What is good for man is not what is good for God.” Jesus gets out of his deathbed, falls to his knees, and begs to have the chance to die on the cross. The wish is granted and as Jesus dies on the cross, he smiles.
In the end of Pi, Max realizes that the knowledge he has within his brain---the number that reveals the name of God, is too powerful to keep. He lobotomizes himself, because he realizes what is good for God is not what is good for man. We see Max sitting on a park bench, a little girl comes up to him, and asks him the product of two large numbers. Before he lobotomized himself, he would have been able to answer without thinking. That part of him is dead now, and he smiles.
Minor similarities
Jesus is Jewish. Max is Jewish. Jesus’ friend Judas, who sides with him against the oppressing power of Rome, betrays him. Max’s friend Lenny Meyer, who sides with him against the oppressing power of Wall Street investors, betrays him. Jesus yells to the crowd that God is not a Jew. He doesn’t belong to the Jewish people alone. Max realizes that the Jewish mystics do not hold rights to the name of God. He withholds this information from them. Mary Magdalene wants Jesus, but the work that Jesus must do prevents him from giving himself to her. Max’s neighbour wants him, but his work doesn’t give him the time to spend with her. His neighnour has a boyfriend. Mary has many boyfriends.
Are there parallels between Max’s teacher Sol, and John the Baptist? Between Sol and Saul, maybe? |
