Review of Pi (1998) by Kevin D — 20 Nov 2010

The reason I did not like this movie is because of how misleading it was. I thought it was a documentary about apple pie, but then it turned out to be about the number pi...just kidding. But I am serious about the whole "I did not like this movie" part.

Darren Aronofsky is a smart guy, no doubt about it. It seemed that his goal with this movie was to prove how smart he was. The script, which he penned, is too smart and intricate for its own good. To me, Aronofsky came off as being a show off.

I can honestly not tell you what this movie was about. It reminded me a lot of the also intricate and smart and awful Eraserhead, from my nemesis David Lynch. David Lynch was put on this Earth for one reason: to make movies I don't like (except for Blue Velvet).

Both movies are shot in black and white, they look great for films that had no budget, they are extremely intense and well made, but most importantly, in my opinion, they are random and are not out to coherently approach the viewer.

Both films instead end up becoming expressionist. They are out to show the horror of ideas within the brain: in the case of this movie, it is the goal of Aronofsky to show the fear of information and knowledge and it was Lynch's goal with Eraserhead to show the fear of parenthood.

Had I known going into it that this was an expressionist film maybe my opinion would be different. Scratch that. This movie is great at portraying fear and expression, but to me it served no purpose. The so called story was repetitive: a lot of the same images were shown, the narrative repeated at times, and two of the characters went over the same conflict over and over again.

It was maddening. I needed some distractions in order to complete this film, and mind you it's only an hour and 20 minutes long. Watching this movie is grueling work. This movie is supposedly a thriller, but I found nothing thrilling about it, except for the music, which was awesome.

I really dug the musical score. This movie failed because Darren Aronofsky spent too much time in trying to make the "ideas" and back story of this movie too intelligent for its own good. He should have worked harder at making sure the audience would be able to pay attention to relatable characters and he should have made a coherent story.

What were left with is a visually and audibly appealing movie that makes absolutely no sense.