10 OF PI

During a recent discussion with a friend (who wanted to borrow Zontar, The Thing from Venus from me) about certain b-movies, there were some titles brought forth which classified not as 'so bad they're great' but more as good or great. One of these was the 1998 Darren Aronofsky low budget black & white flick, Pi. I first heard about this film while watching a news magazine piece (probably 48 Hours on CBS) on that year's Sundance film fest and the independent movies entered. Pi sounded most intriguing and this program covered the director's efforts in the editing room to make the deadline.

I saw Pi when it hit theatres in its limited run back in 1998 and loved it.

Last evening I decided to go into my VHS library and pull out a copy I knew I had made four years ago from a tape I rented but didn't get around to watching before it was due back at the video store (Suspect Video here in Toronto).

Watching Pi again last night reassured me that it is every bit as good as I remembered it being. And I noticed some things this time around that eluded me the first viewing; a sign of a good movie.

The plot is driven: Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), a mathematician, is obsessed with explaining everything through numbers. His drive to find patterns and relationships in these numbers gets him into trying to explain the stock market -- trouble starts. Intrigue follows. We get inside Max's head in addition to the external happenings. His battle with chronic headaches succeeds in torturing him as they add to the figurative headache of his quest, or rather, obsession, to make sense of certain numbers and their sequences.

Pi is not for all tastes -- it is what it is: A fine example of making a film to fit the (very small) budget and limited technical resources contained within, and doing so in exemplary fashion. Aronofsky used the contrasty -- this film was shot on Tri-X reversal film -- image to suit the story. (Reversal film is more 'rigid' and has to be exposed carefully as there is not a lot of latitude.) High contrast imagery such as newspapers, black grease pencils applied on these newspapers, and white cream dispensed into coffee fuses beautifully with the dramatics. Pi is about symbols, numerals in particular, shapes, so the cinematography emphasizes them.

The audio is, at times, a multi track affair with varied volumes and shock chords to great effect... all to tell this story.

Aronofsky understands the tools of the trade. Requiem for a Dream, made by the director in 2000, is indicative of the Pi style, and it too is terrific.