MovieChat Forums > Pi (1998) Discussion > A pity Aronofsky didn't ask real Go play...

A pity Aronofsky didn't ask real Go players

posted 9 years ago by modschaegiebschen
4 replies | jump to latest

It's not that I don't like the movie, but just like with the amateurish math displayed in the movie, Sol & Max's Go game only superficially looks like a game played between knowledgeable players. It looks more like a game played between two players who watched a Go game being played before their eyes once and then tried to emulate that. It becomes particularly apparent at the moment when Sol says something like "stop thinking, follow your intuition" and Max attaches a stone inside his large territorial framework - a completely useless move, giving awkward form, adding no strength, reducing the size of his framework instead of enlarging it, not fixing any of his weaknesses. It's a pity because there are definitely strong Go players in New York and they are probably not that hard to find. Not finding and asking one of them is just lazy. But maybe the small budget really didn't allow for that. Still a pity, because there are not many western movies mentioning Go at all.

[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

This sort of thing quite often happens with chess games in films too.

... just like with the amateurish math displayed in the movie,

It's a movie surrounding itself with a mathematical vibe rather than totally focussing on pure mathematics thereby almost guaranteeing a reduction in audience size and interest.🐭

[–] modschaegiebschen 9 years ago

Yeah, I know. Can't help it that most of the audience is not really interested in math. I can accept that the mathematical elements were superficial. More detailed math probably would not make a difference for most of the audience and at worst bore them.

But showing the replay of a real Go game instead of that imitation would not scare the audience away. Most of them probably don't know Go or at least have never learned the rules and so they wouldn't recognize the difference between the real thing and the game Aronofsky showed. But a real game would have had the advantage that you could show it to an experienced Go player and ask for explanation of what Max & Sol did and why they did it.

[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

But showing the replay of a real Go game instead of that imitation would not scare the audience away.

Agreed.🐭

[–] vortexrider 9 years ago

I noticed that as well. Also the stuff Max's old friend tells him about Go is simply not true. To play it "intuitively" is what people who only have superficial knowledge assume. I am not a good Go player. I am in the bottom of the kyu ladder but I've read all the principles, theory, and history of Go. Anyone who'd have read a basic Go introduction book knows that every move is calculated and planned out and "chaos" is what it appears like only to observers.

It is simply laziness if it is meant to be accurate. The only explanation is if the Go board, all the math, and numerology, as well as all the crazy people surrounding max are the delusions of his warped mind.