The film revolves around Maximilian Cohen, a brilliant yet troubled mathematical genius portrayed by Sean Gullette. Max, who currently finds himself without a job, believes that the secrets of the universe can be unraveled through numbers. He takes on the challenge of predicting stock market patterns, using his intricate knowledge and his homemade supercomputer, Euclid, in the confines of his cramped New York City apartment located in Chinatown.
Through a captivating narrative, the film opens with Max recalling a traumatic childhood memory where he defied his mother's warning and tried to stare directly at the sun. This reckless decision led to lasting damage to his eyes, and although they healed, they brought with them severe headaches that haunt him to this day. These debilitating pains push him to the brink of insanity and often leave him incapacitated. Alongside these physical ailments, Max wrestles with extreme paranoia and experiences unsettling hallucinations, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and the manifestations of his tortured mind.
Despite his isolation, Max finds a brief connection with Jenna, a curious young girl played by Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao, who is intrigued by his mathematical genius. As he works tirelessly on his stock predictions, a catastrophic event occurs when Euclid crashes and spits out a seemingly random 216-digit number right before it fails. Dismayed, Max discards the printout, only to discover the next morning that the stock predictions made prior to the crash were astonishingly accurate. He desperately scours the park’s trash bins for the printout but comes up empty-handed.
Max's interactions remain limited, mostly involving a young neighbor, Devi (played by Samia Shoaib). His solitary existence is occasionally interrupted by visits to Sol Robeson, his former mathematics professor, portrayed by Mark Margolis. Sol, who is now immobile and reliant on others for care, had once been a pioneer in studying the mathematical constant Pi. As they reconnect, Sol grows uneasy when Max brings up the enigmatic 216-digit number. He appears to have had a similar experience years earlier, leading him to caution Max about the dangers of pursuing the number’s meaning.
In a twist of fate, Max meets Lenny Meyer at a coffee shop—a Hasidic Jew researching mathematical concepts within the Torah. Lenny shows Max an intriguing concept called Gematria, correlating Hebrew letters to numerical values and suggesting that the Torah encodes a profound message in numbers. Drawn in by this idea, Max realizes that the number they seek overlaps with some of his existing numeric theories.
The plot thickens as shadowy figures from a Wall Street firm, led by Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart), take an interest in Max's discoveries. She strategically offers him a high-performance computer chip, "Ming Mecca," to entice him into commercializing his research. Although Max declines her offer, the lure of potential breakthroughs into understanding the Torah proves too tempting. After using the chip, he finds himself overwhelmed by visions of stock market patterns and increasingly intense migraines, culminating in a grotesque vein-like protrusion on his temple.
Guided by Sol's cryptic warnings about the 216-digit number's significance, tension builds as Max encounters both Marcy's agents and Lenny, each trying to extract the secrets he’s uncovered. Upon capture, Max's life hangs by a thread when Lenny, who initially appears to be a friend, tries to wrestle the number from him, resulting in Max being knocked unconscious.
Upon awakening, Max is introduced to Rabbi Cohen (Stephen Pearlman), a leader amongst Kabbalists, who reveal that the number could herald a new messianic age. However, Max zealously asserts that the knowledge belongs solely to him. In a frantic turn of events, he learns of Sol’s passing and is driven to uncover his final insights, eventually finding scribblings leading back to his own calculations.
As the narrative spirals into madness, Max's compulsion to connect the dots leads to destructive behavior, as he believes the headache and the number are intertwined. In a moment of profound despair, he partners with insanity, self-inflicting harm in an attempt to rid himself of the burdens of his knowledge. Ultimately, he burns the paper containing the number and resorts to trepanning himself in an act of desperation.
In a poignant conclusion, Max’s life takes an unexpected turn when Jenna approaches him in a park, innocently posing mathematical questions. With a newfound sense of tranquility, Max smiles and admits that he no longer knows the answer. No longer grappling with complex equations or haunted by his former anxieties, he sits peacefully on a park bench, embracing the simplicity of existence amidst the rustling trees.
