Pi

Darren Aronofsky's debut film effort is the type of assured stylistic filmmaking that gets independent film lovers drooling. Aronofsky bombards the viewer with incessant editing and close images right from the first shot onward. He won the Director's Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 for his in-your-face portrayal of math genius Max Cohen, an individual who gets closer and closer to insanity as he reaches understanding of a fateful, religious rooted 216 digit number. Calling Pi a mathematical thriller would not be incorrect, and as awkward as that may sound, Pi works on almost every level.

In our first shot of the film, following a techno-ridden opening credits sequence, we see our main character Max Cohen sleeping face down, blood slowing creeping out of his nose. The shot is eerily lit and the black and white saturated so that blacks are solid and the brights seem to glow. In calm narratation we're told that Max once stared straight into the sun, suffering what was thought to be irrepairable damage. By a miracle Max recovered his vision - at a price. He now suffers debilitating headaches that require packets of pills to reduce the unrelenting pain. The arrival of the headaches is preceded by the shaking of his right hand, causing Max to bow out of whatever he's doing to his bathroom, readying himself for injections.

Pi's script, written by Aronofsky himself, draws the viewer into the concept of the film with interesting number anecdotes. Any viewer with a mind for numbers will get drawn into such unusual quirks. Sometimes the imagination must be left to wander, as some of the steps Aronofsky asks you to make are a bit far-fetched, but necessary to move along the plot. For instance, the method in which religious meaning is brought into the film is a bit out there, but nevertheless completely necessary in showing the evolving state-of-mind of Max.

Max focuses his work on the stock market, which is where he runs into a computer problem based around an endless loop inside his computer named Euclid. Max believes that, like everything else in life, the stock market is rooted in a mathematical system. However, whenever he comes close to figuring out the solution to his problem, Euclid has an error, spitting out a number about 200 digits long. From then on, the film tries hard to tie all the loose ends that have been developed. It does a noble job, with rarely seeming forced. They work because our mathematical genius has been developed so adaquately.

Pi is a directorial showcase for one of the most up and coming directors around. His natural talent is abundant, and if given the proper script, Aronofsky could turn into something really special.

On a scale of 1 to 10 theorems : (Pi)^2 - 1 = 8