I thought it was hilbert towards the ending just until he got knocked down. Now I am stuck between pascal and Hilbert, but I think I ll go with Hilbert. Did anyone else feel sorry for him?
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
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Pascal was smarter than all of themWhen there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
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I'd have to say that Hilbert was easily the smartest.
He managed to prove the Goldbach conjecture after all. I've never thought that being insane precludes being smart.
None of them were remotely likable people, but that's an entirely different question.
It was never confirmed that he proved Goldbach's conjecture. You can't actually trust that kid to grasp Hilbert's attempt in a matter of seconds.
I thought this was the beauty of the ending. We know neither if Hilbert wanted to actually kill them (maybe he just wanted to get the truth out of the kid) nor if he was just completely insane. Or got insane over the years trying to find a proof and was just imagining he finally got it right.
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A year is a long time.
Not so long. Just once around the sun.
Who was a genius? Hilbert
Who was the (practically) smartest. Pascal.
In the end Pascal knew there was no way that Hilbert didn't already put everything in motion for his post-mortem publication. He saved the kid's dilemma where there is none. Hilbert surely wasn't so stupid as to rely on some mangled bunch of papers being the sole object of the crime scene investigation.
On the other hand Hilbert figured the Kid as a wannabe.
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You don't see things as they are, you see things as we are.
I would actually argue this.
By the time of the film, Hilbert is obviously insane (or why would he kill everyone in such an elaborate way) so it may very well make sense to him to have the folder found on him in an almost romantic reveal.
If he were thinking straight, he'd have known that everything is going to be turned into a cube of books, blood and wood, the papers would be lost so even having them there means nothing.