The 1998 black-and-white thriller about a mathematician searching for the number 216 is Pi. Darren Aronofsky wrote and directed the film, his feature directorial debut, with Sean Gullette playing mathematician Max Cohen.
Max believes that mathematical patterns underlie nature, the stock market, and even religious texts. His computer produces a mysterious 216-digit sequence, attracting the attention of both Wall Street agents and Hasidic scholars who think it may reveal a divine name. The number is therefore more precisely a 216-digit number, not simply the number 216.
Filmed on high-contrast black-and-white reversal stock, Pi combines psychological horror, paranoia, mysticism, and number theory. Its tiny budget and stark visual style helped establish Aronofsky as a distinctive filmmaker. The film won the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and launched Clint Mansell's film-scoring career.
It is sometimes confused with A Beautiful Mind, another film involving mathematics, but that movie is a biographical drama about John Nash. The Number 23 is also a psychological thriller centered on a recurring number, but it was released in 2007.