Review of Pi (1998) by Gio R — 17 Jul 2012

Pi, the debut feature by director Darren Aronofsky, is nauseating, surreal and frustrating. It is one of those films where the style really overwhelms everything else. I have watched similar films before, films that are about patterns and mathematics and such, but all seem to suffer from a similar problem, a problem that the film outlines early on; we cannot see or understand the pattern, whether it is there or not, it is too big a concept for us to grasp. Really, to put it bluntly, this is where the film fails, on a philosophical level, but it acknowledges and is, generally speaking, about that failure.

It is certainly thought-provoking and leaves the viewer with a profound sense of befuddlement. It reeks of low budget filmmaking. Short and sharp and punchy, like a power drill to the head, it bludgeons us with the frustrations of its main character. Sean Gullette plays Max Cohen, a reclusive math genius who is convinced that a pattern lies in the stock market and is determined to figure it out not for financial profit but simply to know the answer, to hold the knowledge in his overburdened head. The film really succeeds in emulating Max's frustration in the audience as he is plagued by others who wish to use his theory for other means, religious and financial means.

The problem I have with this type of stylised filmmaking, this kind of nauseating filmmaking, is that it can often use overbearing style too much, and it feels distracting, as if it is taking away from the characters, or obstructing us from the characters. Maybe it sets the mood, but I think it is worth asking whether it is all necessary. It is as if the director is trying to force us into the mindset of the character, everything viewed through a film that may be the characters consciousness. Disturbed characters tend to bring out these kinds of stylistic choices. Echoing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Natural Born Killers in this way, it is up to the viewer to decide whether these stylistic choices are helpful or detrimental to the film. It makes us feel nauseous, yes, uncomfortable, yes, but does that necessarily mean the film has won us over? I'm not so sure.

The film is at times cumbersome but is driven by the audiences desire to know the answer as much as Max, whose desperation really can be felt, as he gets tangled up in a conspiracy which we only seem to scratch the surface of. I was intrigued, sure, but was I invested? I'm not so sure. This is a film of ideas, stuffed so full of mathematical formulae that it has gained an understandable cult following and will no doubt impress philosophy scholars, but I cannot help feeling that it is lacking in something. Maybe it is because it is not as character-driven as it thinks it is, but uses Max as a puppet to wield some undoubtedly deep questions. It is idea-driven, and for me this subtracts from the character of Max.

There are problematic moments. The majority of the film consists in Max's apartment (no doubt a symptom of the low budget) and a lot of these scenes feel contrived and repeated endlessly. Another annoying aspect was the continuing focus on, say, cigarette smoke or shaking leaves, shown to try and get the viewer to analyse these things mathematically, to look for patterns, but it is done so much it loses much of its meaning and subtlety. Unfortunately, too much of it feels like filler.

In the end, the ideas and visuals overwhelm the dilemmas of an interesting character and the film never really escapes the static nature of these ideas to give us something more tangible.