Pi

1998 math movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A brilliant but paranoid mathematician is inspired to get a haircut after a Hasidic Jew and some stock market thugs bully him and try to steal his numbers.

You have to love a movie that gives you the same feeling you'd have if you were watching television and saw somebody standing outside your window and staring at you with bulging eyes. Like a modern update of Eraserhead but with a lot more numbers and a conflict you can taste a little better, Pi doesn't really show us anything that you'd see only in the realm of the subconscious but still manages to feel like a strange little third-person nightmare. Connecting the pieces is difficult, more so for a math illiterate, so you go with the greasy flow and feel this one. And it feels claustrophobic, troubling. Aronofsky comes out with directorial guns a'blazing, throwing tricky camera angles and other gimmicks at us to not only push his story along but to put us right inside Maximillian's scrambled head. There's just something so nerdy and poignant about the whole experience. I also loved Mark Margolis, probably because he reminded me of Patrick Magee from A Clockwork Orange. I wanted to learn how to play Go just so I could sit across the table and play with him, probably touch his knee accidentally on purpose. Aronofsky's usual themes of obsession and lives knocked out of balance by obsession are present here, and for a first feature, this seems very assured and confident albeit artsy-fartsy and difficult to completely connect with. Clint "Pop Will Eat Itself" Mansell's score perfectly compliments. A playfully nightmarish flick.