Pi (1997)

"...in this movie there is passion (for knowledge), love (of God), greed and plenty of conflict. I had a ball.  Barbara Shulgasser, San Francisco Examiner

Editor's Note Low-budget film that won Darren Aronofsky "Best Director" at 1998's Sundance Film Festival. Gritty, inventive black-and-white photography drives this story of genius mathematician Max Cohen who is exploring the possible existence of discernible patterns in the stock market. With the aid of Euclid, his home grown supercomputer, Max stumbles upon a bug that crashes his system and spits out a seemingly meaningless number. A knowledgeable friend gives him insight using the ancient game of Go and warns of the spiritual ramifications of powerful numbers. A Hasidic cabalistic sect and representatives from an extremely powerful Wall Street firm then attempt to extract the number from him, by whatever means necessary, for their own ill-gotten gains.

	Ben Shenkman
	Mark Margolis
	Pamela Hart
	Sean Gullette
	Daren Aronofsky - Based On Story By
	Matthew Libatique - Cinematographer
	Darren Aronofsky - Director
	Clint Mansell - Musical Score
	Eric Watson - Producer
	Sean Gulette - Writer

"11:15 Restate my assumptions:|1. Mathematics is the language of nature.|2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.|3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge.|Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature."| -- Max Cohen

"The Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it's a code sent to us from God." | -- Lenny Meyer

Rolling Stone
"...[A] mesmerizing mind-bender.....Aronofsky is a visionary with a raw talent..." 07/09/1998 p.145

USA Today
"...Truly an original..." 08/21/1998 p.3E

Film Comment
"...Ingeniously cerebral, playfully twisted....A tour-de-force of grainy, high-contrast black-and-white photography and inventive editing and sound design..." 03/01/1998 p.7

Premiere
"...[Aronofsky] manages to showcase plenty of style..." 08/01/1998 p.24

Box Office
"...A hallucinatory rumination on the riddle of existence....PI is a delight for the eye and the mind..." -- 5 out of 5 stars 04/01/1998 p.180

Los Angeles Times
"...It is a brilliant intellectual adventure that fans of bold independent filmmaking will want to experience..." 07/24/1998 p.C6

Total Film
"A deeply unnerving and compulsively watchable indie thriller shot entirely in black and white..." 06/01/2000 p.90

Wall Street Journal
"The gritty black-and-whiteness of Darren Aronofsky's first feature recalls another visionary debut, David Lynch's ERASERHEAD." 12/03/2010

James Berardinelli's ReelViews 8 of 10
[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... For anyone who wants a movie to feed their intelligence and imagination more than their eyes and ears, Pi is a solid choice.