Jeff's Reviews

Thoughts on every movie I've ever seen.

Pi (1998)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Starring Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart

Author

Pretty interesting, engaging at times. That 216/self-awareness/God thing was a bit hard to swallow, but the rest was pretty good. What was the point of the movie? A call to appreciate life as it is rather than to try defining it?

Like most student or cheap indie films, sloppy (or perhaps intentionally ambiguous) story, character development, acting, and message. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see what made Max the way he is. The film doesn’t go into the technical aspects of computers and stock-picking and how such unexplainable chaos can really drive a logical mind crazy. Instead, he’s already crazy when we first meet him and all we get to do is explore his already screwed-up psyche a bit. Max is a lot like me in some ways. We both put a lot of faith in math, and our computers always crash.

Dark, expressionistic lighting. Lots of neat shots (which is to be expected in a cheap indie film), especially that tracking shot in front of Max while he walks/runs.

Looking at his resume, I notice that Aronofsky really has a thing for bugs/monsters.

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