Pi

Pi (1998) is about a mathematician looking for a pattern in numbers, and it is Darren Aronofsky's first film. Max Cohen is trying to model the stock market on a computer he built at home. He has two assumptions: everything in nature can be described in numbers, and every system contains a pattern. The market is a system. One day the machine crashes, and before it does it prints a two hundred and sixteen digit number. He throws it away as garbage. Then two parties come after him. An investment firm wants the market model. A group of Jewish scholars says the number may be a name they believe is hidden in the Torah. Max suffers migraines; he cannot bear light, his nose bleeds, and he loses his hold on reality. The film never clarifies the difference between what happens and what he sees. Aronofsky made it for around sixty thousand dollars, raised in hundred dollar contributions from friends and family; when it made money he paid all of them back. It was shot on 16mm reversal black and white stock, which all but eliminates grey and leaves only black and white. The film's uncomfortable texture comes from that. The camera is mostly rigged to Max's body; as he walks the frame stays fixed and the world shakes. Clint Mansell wrote the score, his first. It won the directing award at Sundance. It runs 84 minutes. Good for: independent cinema, mathematics and obsession, and Aronofsky. Less good for: the image and sound are deliberately punishing, and one scene is hard to sit through.