Customer Reviews

Pi

5 star:		(286)
4 star:		(86)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(57)

 

 

It is a remarkable surprise that, in a time of science fiction and fantasy films which continually strive do outdo each other in pyrotechnics, one of the best science fiction films I've seen is a little black & white masterpiece that was shot with a $60,000 budget. Darren Aronofsky, writer and director of 'PI', has created a film that is every bit as engaging as its 'big' brothers - in reality, even more so.

Mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is on a quest. He is convinced that underlying the chaos of the stock market is a pristine order, a mathematical rule with which he can prove that everything can be reduced to numbers. His mentor and teacher is Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), who was forced to give up his own investigations into PI when he suffered a mysterious stroke.

Cohen's investigation takes him far beyond the gyrations of the stock market into the mystical Kaballah and an intense questioning of the basic nature of reality. His tool for this journey is the silent, inanimate computer, Euclid, who seems to deconstruct Cohen's universe further with each strike of the return key. Even when Robeson urges Cohen to take a break from a quest which is clearly destroying the mathematician, torturing him with horrific headaches and hallucinations, Max is unable to stop. He is drawn step by step into the irrevocable gap between the sacred and the mundane.

Made with reversal film which heightens the contrast between light and dark, the film provides a continuous flow of symbolic content which plays in harmony with the world of ideas from with it is drawn. Ants and electric drills, computer chips and the swirls of cream in a cup of coffee all seem to have otherworldly referents. Aronofsky and Gullette, by some strange archaic alchemy have managed to create the seeming of layer after layer of possible meaning. To me the film itself becomes a non-repeating pattern where chaos mimics reality.

This film satisfies on many levels, starting with a question, finding an answer, and then discovering the next question. It is visually brilliant. Film director Matthew Libatique proves himself a genius, and Matthew Maraffi's production design is amazing. Euclid is created out of scrap and loose parts, but manages to take on a full life of its own. The acting is simply perfect. This is a film for late night coffee house conversations, appealing to both the paranoid and the believer.

Notable additional contents of the DVD are two full length commentaries on the film one by Aronofsky and the other by Gullette. There is a section of outtakes, the film trailers and some other miscellany. Much recommended.

Pi is one of the better independent low-budget films I've seen in the last couple of years. It's a strange, twisted, subversive film, which takes as its thesis the idea that it's possible to know too much, to ask too many questions, for one's own good. A good example is the troubled protagonist of Pi, played to chilling perfection by Sean Gullette, who struggles with both the outside world and himself in his quest for the ultimate knowledge -- an equation which will tie together everything, from the beginnings of the universe to the chaotic ups and downs of the stock market. He is spied upon by unnamed big business interests, hoping to cash in on the latter idea; he is spied upon by Hasidic Jews who hope to cash in on the former idea; both sets of spies add the perfect element of paranoia to the film, and convince you that there is far more going on here than meets the eye, far more going on than is being talked about. The ideas put forth in later scenes bear this out -- boy, do they! -- but I wouldn't want to spoil that for you. The events of Pi, especially in the later scenes, are so surprising that any discussion of the plot would be totally unfair -- like telling someone who hasn't seen Citizen Kane what Rosebud is. So instead I'll confine myself to theme and character, which are sort of intertwined in this film. Gullette's character is a genius mathematician (as you might expect), a child prodigy of sorts who has always, we are told by his narration, courted such dangerous ideas and notions...and has paid the price for his arrogance more than once. He suffers from migranes -- really serious, agonizing ones which give him nosebleeds and vicious hallucinations, and which no painkillers seem able to stop or tame. (In fact the depictions of the migranes are amongst the film's best sequences; I watched it with a friend of mine who suffers from such headaches, and he said that these scenes were pretty close to what he experienced, at least in the feeling those scenes evoked.) It is during or just after the onset of these migranes that Gullette's character seems to receive his greatest revelations and insights -- and here the filmmakers use a technique of showing bright light as the literal image of these insights, a bit of symbolism that is almost, but not quite, clumsy and overdone. I believe it's by their sheer conviction that it works that the filmmakers are able to pull it off at all. In fact, it's through the use of this symbolism (light=knowledge) that Pi does some of its best work. It's used to illustrate the thesis I mentioned earlier, that it's possible to want to know too much for one's own good; Gullette's character relates how as a child, he stared too long into the sun, possibly triggering his migranes and his gift for numbers at the same time...which is why both seem intertwined in his perceptions. The use of light in the migrane sequences, and Gullette's subsequent gifts of insight, not only are symbolic but provide foreshadowing -- is he staring into the sun again? If so, what damage will he do this time? And as the plot slowly reveals where it is going, those questions become not only more difficult to answer, but more unsettling to even ask.

Pi was shot in black and white, which I find entirely appropriate. The harsh images created by the cinematography are a perfect echo for the harsh story, spoken in a language of such harsh rhythms...like the song a puppet sings when it siezes the strings of its own puppeteer. It may take more than one viewing to get everything out of this film, because there's a lot packed into it...but the more you watch it, the more rewarding it is. I would heartily reccommend Pi to any lover of experimental film.

"Pi" is a tough film to pin down. Some people go in looking for a complex dissertation on number theory, an explanation of the magic code that will explain the universe, and the true name of God. I think this tact is a mistake. Sure, all of these elements and questions are here, but they're not meant to be taken seriously. Director/writer Darren Aronofsky and writer/star Sean Gullette have distracted their audience with a nifty little McGuffin (Hitchcock's term for a device or plot element that drives the movie forward, but is inconsequential enough to be discarded after it's done its job). The movie is not about the 216-digit number that Max accidentally stumbles across, and is nearly killed for. What we're really watching is a portrayal of obsession. What happens when one man puts on his blinders, plunges forth into the abyss, and nearly destroys himself in the process?

I'm not going to tell you what happens, but I will tell you this: it ain't pretty. Much of the stuff here is pretty gruesome. Gullette looks every bit the tortured math genius: wild hair, constant 5 o'clock shadow, empty eyes, hunched posture, pale skin, bony fingers. He begins the film as a tortured loner, and proceeds to descend from there into a state of self-imposed madness. It is gradual, but palpable. Gullette does a fine job detailing Max, showing his angst and torment quite clearly. I would have liked, however, if he gave Max some humanity by also giving him some humour. Thankfully there is some humour injected into this otherwise dark tale in other places. Max is repeatedly confronted by what can only be described as a hip-hop Kabalist. The character of Lenny Meyer adds some much-needed levity to the film. He torments Max in coffee shops and on the street with his motormouth ramblings about how number theory intersects with the Kaballah. Max, for his part, looks on with bemused frustration, further portraying his difficulty when dealing with actual people.

Aronofsky, who is a proficient visual stylist, gets his first chance to shine here. Techniques that he would later expand and abuse in the engrossing but ponderous "Requiem for a Dream" make their first appearances in this lower budget effort. One particularly stylish device uses manic quick cuts to portray the rhythm and the ritual of Max taking his headache medicine. It was overbearing when used in "Requiem", but fits in nicely here. It is repeated over and over, a technique Aronofsky also likes to employ with his dialogue. There is one story that opens the film, about how when Max was a little boy he forced himself to stare into the sun, which pops up from time to time. We don't understand the implications of this story right away (apparently it is the cause of Max's migraines), but after hearing it several times, and living with Max in his own personal hell, it becomes more potent.

I usually not go for movies that double as surrealistic mood pieces, and judging from the other reviews here I wouldn't enjoy David Lynch's "Eraserhead". But "Pi" has a couple of my favourite cinema motifs: obsession, loneliness, and genius. Throw in a healthy dose of mathematical theory (but not too much) and the remnants of a thriller plot and you've got a movie that dares to engage both your mind and your senses.

[*Shakespeare's "Henry VIII", 1.1.62-3]

Being a genius can give you nasty headaches.

That simple notion, at the heart of Darren Aronofsky's "Pi," defies the complexity of this brilliant little indie thriller. Sean Gullette plays Max Cohen, a mathematics/electronics savant who believes that matter, the world around us - indeed, our very existence - has a pattern to it that can be expressed as a number. Max devotes his life to finding this mysterious 216-digit number.

This has two results. First, Max acts weird. He's paranoid, reclusive, disturbed and vigorously anti-social.

Second, he's pursued by people (presumably those who have more friends and fewer headaches) who might profit from the number: both Hasidic Jews, who think it's the code to the Torah and signals the coming of the messianic age, and Wall Street fat cats.

Is "Pi" profound or just odd? It's some of both, I suppose, but make no mistake: The film is visually stunning, and has a lot to say about the burden of genius, the quest for knowledge - and maybe even about the existence of God. Betcha can't say that about the latest from Adam Sandler.

Health warning: "Pi" has a throbbing score and is filled with grainy, flickering images. A quick finger on the fast-forward button can help viewers avoid Max-like headaches.

Notes for the bewildered:
1. Pi is NOT about the number pi (I'm not sure some of these reviewers even watched the film);
2. Accusations that the film is more about numerology than mathematics miss the point by a mile, i.e. there is a vital scene in which the main character is plainly warned that his obsessive pattern search will lead him into the non-science desert of numerology;
3. Max's search for the 216 digit name of God is not a simple descent into mystical hooey: his investigation of the Torah, like the stock market, is a search for an underlying pattern in a chaotic system. He is intrigued by the possibility of arriving at a fundamental insight into the universe by this discovery. Ultimately his fallacy is not the assumption that this pattern exists, but his presumption that his brain could encompass the entire world.

Enough philosophy - the black and white photography is stark and unsettling, the minor characters are memorable (Lenny and Sol are standouts), the soundtrack is refreshingly modern and engaging without being obtrusive, and the whole is laden with a creepy atmosphere of cold cerebral obsession (this quality probably being the main reason people either love or hate this film).

Reasons for some dissatisfaction might include the hallucination sequences being only vaguely delineated from the rest of the narrative, which causes some confusion, and the discontinuity of the plot, in which story and character are artfully sketched rather than fully filled out.

The ending is also problematic, but it is unsatisfying only in as much as total comprehension of the universe by the human mind is an impossible dream. It is this intellectual tantalization which is, I believe, the point of the film.

Pi, I understand, has now been factored to over a billion places. My question: are the digits random? Anybody out there know? This film does not answer that question (nor does it address it). What it asks is, are numbers the language of life? Max Cohen, mathematical genius, believes they are. There is a pattern, and he would like to find it, partly because it's there and partly for use in the stock market. So would some other people. He is thus tormented both within and without.

One of the things that made this a successful commercial film (for an indie venture, of course) is the fine acting by Sean Gullette who plays Max Cohen. He was entirely convincing as a reclusive and paranoid mathematical genius; but he is also a man like Einstein who emanates charisma and something perhaps beyond charm. Also effective was the story by Director Darren Aronofsky, which, unlike some indie films, actually had a plot with clear conflicts. The choice of Pamela Hart, a strong black woman as a kind of hit woman from Wall Street was excellent. Also very good was Mark Margolis as Cohen's mentor, Sol Robeson. Aimed at a popular audience were, alas, some chase scenes; but they were not badly done, and even seemed appropriate, although I think there should be a moratorium placed on subway chase scenes in movies, at least for the next decade or so. Also aimed at a popular audience was some of the violent images, in particular the scene where Cohen places the power drill to his temple, like the barrel of an executioner's handgun, turns it on and presses. Kids love that shtick. (I could hardly watch.)

Much of the detail was completely veracious, the spiral as an example of complexity in nature, or the wonderful re-enactment of the programmer's moment of truth just before he hits the return key and finds out if his creation will run, crash or go into infinite loop; or a group of fundamental religious people (in this case Hasidic Jews) believing that some sort of numerology will miraculously reveal some major truth of their religion; or even the fact that Max Cohen still used five and one-quarter inch floppies for his data. Also wondrously right was the spider/moth sticky cocoon that gummed up his computer, or the little girl who multiplies on her calculator and then asks Max for the answer, delighted when he gets it right. That a stock market bonanza served as the El Dorado of number crunchers was also right on target. And an especially good fit was the techno rock in the background.

But some of this was definitely wrong. The idea that Sol Robeson would think Max's computer had become or was becoming "conscious" was too much of a leap. Or the notion that the human brain, or any brain for that matter, could predict stock prices as they come out of the ticker is absurd. Complexity theory would argue strongly that such specific data, like the number of rain drops in a storm tomorrow, is in principle impossible to predict. I also didn't like the resolution which allows us to treat whichever of the foregone scenes we like as dream-fantasies. I don't like plots that are resolved by "it was a dream" mechanisms, even, or especially, retrospective ones.

But movies are about images and the image of Cohen's head and his brain and of what hard, metallic things can do to it, is something that lingers long after the lights have come up. Indeed what makes this an engrossing movie is its psychological and visual content. The stark, grainy black and white cinematography actually enhance our appreciation. Indeed, light and dark and other dichotomies are part of the expression of Aronofsky's vision. He juxtaposes contrasting elements of our culture, of the mind and of nature to tease us into seeing that the world is vastly more mysterious than we can imagine. There is order and there is chaos. There is number and there is the organism that is an expression of number. There is rationality and there is insanity. There is the soft, fragile brain and the hard electrodes. There is the game of go, more complex than chess, the wooden board with the simple lines and the black and white pebbles that spring open the door to chaos (the mathematical kind). And there is life, fragile, uncertain, teetering on the edge, and in the fuzzy distance there is the shimmering certainly of a fundamental religion. Aronsky catches all of this and ends up with an electronic poem camouflaged as a movie.

In "Pi" one encounters a film that is undeniably original. Shot in jarring black and white, and using a variety of bizarre camera angles to convey the first person, it breaks new ground in the ways that a general audience movie can be shot. More intriguing, however, is the plot.

Simply put, this movie follows a mathematician as he peruses an underlying pattern in the stock market., and later the universe. Along the way he deals with an undefined neurological disorder, as well as Wall Street thugs and Jewish mystics. As he comes closer and closer to this pattern, which becomes a representation of some sort of organizing force (God) in creation, he slips further and further into paranoia. In the end, the director seems to be questioning whether the pursuit of the divine is ultimately self defeating. Could it be that searching for the pattern in all things is a refutation of the beauty of creation?

Most of the reviews of this movie seem to have heaped it with either praise or scorn. The reality, I think, lies somewhere in between. On the one hand, this is an intriguingly shot, genuinely original film. On the other it is somewhat shallow; the viewer is left to draw conclusions that might have been better served by being explicitly spelled out. I happen to like it when books or movies do this, but that's more of a personality trait than the hallmark of a great artist. In the end, "Pi" is a pleasant diversion from many of the mundane films being made today, and it will certainly leave you thinking. On a related note, if you enjoyed this film, or are intrigued by it's premise, you might enjoy the novel "Damascus Gate" by Robert Stone, as it explores similar issues.

I think "Pi" will do for indie thrillers what "Clerks" has done for indie comedies. Both movies are shot in a somewhat gritty b&w film, both have a great vision, and both have actors you've probably never seen before but who do a bang-up job nonetheless.

The similarities end there. This movie is pretty hard-nosed, and it's not for the faint of heart or for anyone with a short attention span. I actually enjoyed watching this movie by myself and making my own conclusions - I suggest you do the same at first before watching again with your friends. It demands your full attention.

Especially for those fascinated with numbers, this movie will knock your socks off. The main character is hunting for a pattern to Wall Street. This makes him quite popular with a group of individuals looking to bank some serious cash. Also interested is a sect of Jews looking to find a 216-digit number that will unlock the secrets of God. Think of the pressure! The man understandibly suffers headaches and an eventual mental breakdown.

Most people have been introduced to chaos theory if they've read "Jurassic Park." It's a good start, and "Pi" will take you further down those roads. There are ample "A-ha!" experiences of insight, and though the ending is kind of the easy way out (hence 4 stars instead of 5), it will be quite enjoyable. "Pi" is one great reason why you should explore an independent film now and again: It is definitely a departure from the realm of big-budget entertainment that puts special effects and pretty faces ahead of good acting and a good plot.

I am not a mathematician. However, I can usually see how things work, the schematics, the overall structure of something. Looking for the structure of a thing,the theory, the pattern, is something that fascinates me. It is part of the work I do. This film is therefore very appealing to me. No, a better word is compelling. The young man in this film is searching for a (or THE)pattern, the structure of random numbers, the web inherent in Chaos theory. Other, more selfish people in the film try to use the protagonist, but those people are also searching. The Hasidic man is searching for the structure of the Deity, the numeric key to the name of G-d. The stock broker is searching for the overall numeric pattern of the Market. All seek an explanation, born out of Wonder. So, I can't bring myself to dislike any of the people in the film who are searching for the Answer, the Structure. All of us, to a greater or lesser degree, are searching for answers, the why of things. The search for the why or how of things is what enobles men and women. As a Buddhist, I should say "the path is the Goal," but that is too pat an answer, even if it is correct. This film is a wonderful examination of our shared obsession of Seeking. It explores both the depth of mind and the limitation of Mind. It is as engrossing and compelling a film as any I've ever seen. I recommend it. It deserves (and requiries) more than one viewing.

PI is one of the most original movies I have seen in years, proving once again that you don't need a big budget to make a great film. At the same time, this movie probably is not for everyone; don't watch it in the dark when you're depressed. Or maybe you should: you may relate to it even more.

Delving into arcane knowledge of math, the Jewish cabal and the meaning of numbers, this movie makes you wonder. What is reality? What brings everything together? Is there something hidden, the name of God imprinted somewhere deep inside of imbalanced genius. Adding to it a group of people from some strange corporation who desire this knowledge and also a group of Jewish mystics who chase this poor genius of a man, the film takes on an unreal, yet believable quality.

With a great score, haunting acting and wild hallucinogenic images, the movie is a wild ride of a mystic thriller.