Review: Pi

Pi
Written and Directed By Darren Aronofsky
August 20, 2008


In in year 2000 Writer/Director Darren Aronofsky shocked the audience with his NC-17 masterpiece Requiem For A Dream. Needless to say it went on to be nominated 34 times around a lot of different film festivals, winning several such as Best Movie (the Chlotrudis Awards), an Oscar nomination (Best Actress In A Leading Role), Best Cinematography (Independent Spirit Awards), Best Director (Online Film Critics Society Award) and even Best Original Score by Clint Mansell (OFCSA), and even now you can find the theme from Requiem in several movie trailers such as Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Matthew Kassovitz's Babylon A.D.

Now lets rewind back before Requiem For a Dream, its 1998 and Darren Aronofsky is sitting in New York City planning production for a movie that would soon carry his career to a new level. It took 60,000 dollars for director Darren Aronofsky to make this film and this money was raised by friends and family who contributed 100$ each, they were eventually paid back after Artisan bought Pi for a million bucks.

Pi follows a very paranoid "number theorist" named Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) who is desperately looking for a key number that will open the door to "universal patterns" found in nature, but slowly begins to make him psychotic.
Max befriends a strange friend named Lenny who is a Jewish Hebrew who little to Max's knowledge is after the same thing. The numbers.
Max however has a bothersome time figuring it out, but he is determined to get it no matter how sick, or psychotic he becomes. So psychotic in fact that he begins to have terrible headaches that end up with nose bleeds, as you can imagine it is a very frustrating thing for Max to handle, he eventually leads himself to his bathroom where he breaks the mirror, shaves his head, and holds a drill to his temple while looking at a book about the human head and begins to drill. Wouldn't that just make the headache worse? If that wasn't bad enough, after the numbers have been discovered it does not become any easier. As his earlier friend Lenny takes him to his other Hebrew friends and lets just say they become very hostile. For they think the numbers Max has in his head are the code to unlocking an ultimate message from God. I'll just say they are VERY keen on getting the numbers.

From beginning to end this movie had me hooked, crazy conspiracy, psychological mind games, numbers a sign from god? A haunting yet modern score binds this movie together perfectly, along with great cinematography which disorients the viewer in perfect time with the music. This movie is very stylish and can be very particular depending on the viewer. Pi may not be as stomach turning as Requiem For A Dream but still very entertaining, and thought provoking.



Rating: 8/10