Review of Pi (1998) by Stuart K — 27 Apr 2014

The directorial debut of Darren Aronofsky, who until that time had made a number of short films including Fortune Cookie (1991), Supermarket Sweep (1991|), Protozoa (1993) and No Time (1994)), his debut feature debut was made for a shoestring budget of $60,000 and shot in little over 4 weeks in New York with most of money raised from private investors and Aronofsky's family, it manages to do a lot with very little.

Maximillian "Max" Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a number theorist who believes everything in life can be understood through numbers. He doesn't have much contact with the outside world, other than Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), who mentored Max with his gift for mathematics.

Using his computer Euclid, he makes calculations, and when it crashes, spewing out a 216 digit number, Max tosses it away, only to find it matched a stock market prediction he made. Believing he could make money from this scheme, Max tells Sol, only for Sol to be unnerved by Max's excitement, and it's not long before other people in Max's neighbourhood want his secret.

Shot in a stark, unsettling black and white, it has some clever cinematography and moments of paranoia. It owes a big debt of gratitude to Eraserhead (1977), Brazil (1985) and Barton Fink (1991), but it got Aronofsky's career off to a flying start, and Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010) followed.