Pi (1998) Review - Dylan McCully

Written by Dylan McCully, 10/15/22

Dylan McCully's Cinema: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls521125877/

To highlight the release of The Whale I will be reviewing Aronofsky's filmography, starting from his directorial debut, Pi. There are many scenes of equation solving and pseudophilosophical discussion, which some might find pretentious, but makes for a thrilling mystery in my book. Aronofsky really had to scrounge around to fund this film, asking everyone he knew for $100, which I can respect.

Max Cohen believes everything can be solved numerically. He also suffers from cluster headaches, extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and schizoid personality disorder. Max (played by Sean Gullette) programs his computer, Euclid, to make stock predictions, but it instead prints out a 216 digit number. As it happens, Max's math mentor, Sol, got the same number a while back. Sol is played by Mark Margolis, who I will always see as Hector Salamanca. Max meets a fellow jew who tells him the Torah is just a string of code as well. Some stockbrokers eventually approach Max for the code, and I won't go into the rest of the story from there. My favorite scene in the movie comes near the end, so I won't spoil it, but some of the best scenes are when Max realizes that these patterns in life go much deeper than he previously thought. Every time these realizations happen, the tempo of the music amps up, the editing gets faster, the shots get tighter, all representing Max's increasingly manic mental state.

The quick cut editing reminiscent of Kuleshev is all over this film, and it will obviously seen a ton in Requiem for a Dream. Some of the musical trademarks and sound design Aronofsky is known for are established here as well. You can definitely tell that it is Aronofsky's first, but it still holds its own against his other films. For some reason, Aronofsky went balls to the wall on the exposure and contrast. This makes for some ugly shots, but it also creates some unnerving shots. You can definitely taste the influence of Eraserhead in terms of feel, visual design and sound. 5.5/10

Aronofsky Ranking: 1. Pi (1998) - 5.5/10