Subject: Review: PI (1998)

From: James Berardinelli <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Jun 1998 05:26:29 GMT

PI

A Film Review by James Berardinelli

RATING: *** OUT OF ****

United States, 1998
U.S. Release Date: 7/10/98 (limited)
Running Length: 1:25
MPAA Classification: No MPAA Rating (Violence, profanity)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1

Cast: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, 
      Stephen Pearlman, Samia Shoaib
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Producer: Eric Watson
Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky
Cinematography: Matthew Ubatique
Music: Clint Mansell
U.S. Distributor: Live Entertainment

     PI, the letter, is a character in the Greek alphabet roughly 
equivalent to the English "p."  PI, the mathematical notation, is 
commonly used to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to 
its diameter.  PI, the movie, is Darren Aronofsky's debut feature (and 
the winner of a directing award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival), an 
independent science fiction thriller that combines questions about God 
and infinity with the personal struggle of one man to regain control of 
his life.  

     PI is actually the second low-budget, no-effects science fiction 
movie I have seen this year.  The other, Hilary Brougher's THE STICKY 
FINGERS OF TIME, will be released by Strand Releasing during the Fall.  
I must admit to liking the approach embraced by PI and STICKY because 
the monetary limitations have spawned creative scripts with unique 
solutions.  Without ILM and a $100 million budget to fall back upon, 
film makers who venture into this arena must be prepared to truly engage 
the minds of their audiences instead of relying upon a DTS sound system 
and state of the art visuals to generate oohs and aahs.  

     PI is the story of Max Cohen (ably portrayed by Sean Gullette), a 
computer geek with a genius for mathematics.  Socially, Max is 
completely inept.  Aside from occasionally showing off his arithmetic 
abilities to a girl who lives in his apartment building, he avoids all 
human contact, including any interaction with his attractive next door 
neighbor (Samia Shoaib), who shows an interest in him.  Max lives by 
three basic principles: (1) mathematics is the language of nature, (2) 
everything can be represented and understood through numbers, and (3) 
there are patterns in nature.  His objective is to use his home-built 
supercomputer, Euclid, to analyze the patterns in the financial markets 
to predict the exact performance of every stock.  During the course of 
his studies, he encounters a mysterious string of 216 digits, and, when 
a Jewish numerologist (Ben Shenkman) becomes aware of this, he confides 
in Max that "the pattern in the Torah is 216 digits," and this discovery 
may hold the key to unlocking God's true name.  Max, who doesn't believe 
in God, is more interested when his mentor (Bark Margolis) reveals that 
he once encountered a "bug" of 216 digits when he was investigating pi.  

     Max's mathematical brilliance comes at a price, however:  he has 
frequent, debilitating headaches and seizures that send him into a 
bizarre state of consciousness.  During those episodes, he encounters 
people who stalk him then disappear, and, on one occasion, he discovers 
a brain lying on the ground in a New York City subway station.  The key 
to Max's genius and pain appears to be a mark on his skull, and, perhaps 
in order to eliminate the one, he must sacrifice the other.

     Although the plot of PI is eccentric (even for a science fiction 
effort), Aronofsky's message is actually quite simple:  life does not 
fit into neat patterns, and complete control is impossible.  Oddly, this 
is also the underlying premise of the two JURASSIC PARK movies, proving 
that certain concepts are universal.  However, the central theme is only 
one of many fascinating subjects tapped into by the screenplay.  For 
example, Max's quest to use numerical patterns to model every aspect of 
the universe reveals some interesting facts about the Hebrew language.  
(In Hebrew, all letters have a numerical equivalent.  The number for 
"man" is 3.  The number for "woman" is 41.  41+3=44, which is the number 
for "child.")  In addition to all of its intellectually-stimulating 
aspects, PI also works as a character study of an obsessed individual 
whose single-minded goal blinds him to everything else, including 
health, friendship, love, and even sanity.

     Aronofsky elected to shoot the film in black-and-white, which lends 
a dream-like atmosphere to all of the proceedings. PI transports us to 
a world that is like yet unlike our own, and, in its mysterious 
familiarity, is eerie, intense, and compelling.  Reality is a fragile 
commodity, but, because the script is well-written and the 
central character is strongly developed, it's not hard to suspend 
disbelief.  As the movie draws to a conclusion, it perhaps becomes a 
little too ambitious in trying to unify all the great questions of 
existence.  At that point, PI slides with only limited success into an 
exploration of metaphysics and spirituality.  Nevertheless, I prefer 
movies that take risks like this, even when they're flawed, to those 
that try for a safe, formula-driven resolution.  So, while I didn't 
necessarily buy everything that transpired in the final fifteen minutes, 
I was surprised by much of it, and Aronofsky never lost my attention.  
For anyone who wants a movie to feed their intelligence and imagination 
more than their eyes and ears, PI is a solid choice.  It probably 
deserves 3.1416 stars, but since my scale doesn't support that, I'll 
round it off to three.

Copyright 1998 James Berardinelli

- James Berardinelli
e-mail: [email-masked]

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