Pi (1998)

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Director: Darren Aronofsky

Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Sean Gullette as Maximillian "Max" Cohen; Mark Margolis as Sol Robeson; Ben Shenkman as Lenny Meyer; Samia Shoaib as Devi; Pamela Hart as Marcy Dawson; Stephen Pearlman as Rabbi Cohen; Ajay Naidu as Farrouhk; Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao as Jenna; Lauren Fox as Jenny Robeson

Synopsis: Whilst locked in his rented apartment working on how to predict stock market data, mathematical genius Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette) may have found the name of God in a code his computer prints out before dying on him. With a corporation at one end interested in his research, and a sect of rabbinical mystics at the other desiring the name of God, Cohen ignores the warnings of his mentor and friend Sol (Mark Margolis) of how dangerous his search for the truth is, as his cluster headaches increase and bizarre sights plague his waking reality.

Pi is the film even those who hate Darren Aronofsky's work should see. Nineteen years before mother! (2017), Pi is a drastically different film and its obvious way when you watch them close to each other. mother! is the product of hubris, unfocused and problematic, with money and production design behind it without stepping back to carefully consider itself. Pi like the best of the American independent films of its time, even if raw and imperfect, is ferocious and made by a hungry young filmmaker, helped by the restrictions he had to make the film. At only eighty minutes, there is no time for pretentiousness and Aronofsky cannot afford big name actors or CGI rock monsters. It is for the better.

Helping is that, whilst mother! presented a problematic misreading of Christian iconography and vague depictions of the creative ego and environmentalism, Pi feels like the creation of a Darren Aronofsky who has actually read up on his premise. It is still a surface interpretation of Jewish mysticism and mathematics, but it is a clearly presented premise, in which a young man fails to heed his mentor's warning of searching for the truth, said mentor even going as far as point out one of his goldfish is named Icarus, the figure of Greek legend who flew too close to the sun. Cohen himself has experience in this as, referenced numerous times in narration, he was once warned by his mother never to star directly into the sun only to do such a thing. That his mentor's stroke that debilitated him was likely due to also finding the name of God, through his own research on the number of Pi, is not enough to dissuaded Cohen. Aronofsky does not try to add any more themes too many, and he is not trying a subject like artistic creativity or the nature of mankind which could show him up as being empty minded on the topics. Instead this is something well worn and yet able to lead to his own unique take on the subject. That it references Jewish mysticism even if a beginner's guide to it, like the Kabala, is certainly a different way to tackle the subject as said mystics and a sinister corporation encroach on Cohen. A curious paranoia thriller, a Jorge Luis Borges plot in need of Borges having to actually interpret it in his own way.

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Here as well the body horror that failed in mother! works as it is the result of Aronofsky having to rely on limited means. It is also original as a result of this, where even the fact it evokes other work and even surrealistic art does not deny the film its own idiosyncratic mood with the material. Cohen's visions, hallucinations or an insight to another world, are far and away more frightening than in mother!, especially as the film in set in real life New York City of the period forcing these bizarre moments into our own world and Cohen's. Where a bleeding man is stood erect on a subway station platform or when Cohen finds a brain covered in ants, sights that could be found in an isolated urban environment if you crossed the wrong backstreet or went on the underground subway late at night. If there is a film Aronofsky has likely taken a lot of influence from it is Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), which he has admitted to. At times, especially in the look of the film and Coehn's apartment being swallowed up by computers, it is as if the film is going to turn into an American remake of Tetsuo. It even evokes a work that was released the same year in its homeland called Serial Experiments Lain (1998), a Japanese animated series where a computer can swallow up an entire room with tentacle like cables and vast unknown components like Cohen's in his apartment. Aronofsky's is just as strange especially when Cohen finds an unknown organising has been cultivating amongst the circuitry.

Shot in high contrast black and white, Aronofsky's film is stunning to look at. It is not beautiful in the conventional sense, in many a grainy dank back alley, but the result feels lived in and atmospheric. The music is also perfect, not only Clint Mansell in an earlier part of his career but cult electronic musicians like Autechre on the soundtrack. This music is of its era but it has not dated in the slightest, the beats and crackles of each piece elevating the moments of paranoia and fear with ease and without becoming overbearing. Compared to no score and just pure unfocused chaos in mother! and the comparison stands out greatly in favour of the older film. Pi is not perfect because it has to deal with loose threads eventually in its premise. It is not as streamlined as Tetsuo was, having to juggle paranoia thriller touches with the esoteric kabala content and sci-fi horror, something which it could have gone further with for a few extra minutes to make all sides gel fully. However at eighty minutes one accepts it having to play fast and loose with the material, better for it to have been unpredictable rather than expounding on the material in ways which make the likes of later films like Noah (2014) egregious, full of clichés and terrible attempts of worldly contemplation.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Mindbender/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

If the Darren Aronofsky that made Pi returns, then I might change my mind on a previous statement I made (see here). The Aronofsky of Pi is alien to the Aronofsky who came later, who had over indulged and disconnected himself from reality to the point it became morally problematic. Considering how mother! has been viewed, trashed as much as cheered, maybe the humbleness of shooting on real streets on a low budget again will purge his acquired flaws and find himself. If he made a film as good as Pi as a result, I would gladly apologise for some of my more disparaging remarks as it would be happier for him and film viewers if the version of him who made Pi came back wiser and as hungry to make good cult films again.

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