Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Well, hello there fellow Epinionators, it has been a while. May I begin by offering my most profuse and heartfelt apologies for the lateness of this entry into JuiceJW's Future of Hollywood Write Off. Three weeks is pushing it some I know. I shan't go into the actualities of the whys and wherefores here, however if you feel you are owed an explanation then I shall attempt to elucidate in the comment section. And now to the business at hand...


Having sat, wracking my brains over the possibilities this write-off afforded me, which given Hollywood's currently arid artistic climate and it's inherent and continuing glut of Bruckheimer financed dross, the possibilities seemed scant to say the least.

A quick peek at the write-off homepage (http://futurewo.benho.org/) saw many of my initial considerations, well, written off. P.T. Anderson -scratched, likewise David Fincher, ditto The Wachowski Brothers, with Christopher Nolan having been rightly apotheosized I was beginning to find myself at a loose end.

I considered Harmony Korrine, a visionary and an originator. However in the light of such oddball works as Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, that his is a talent which seems committed to remaining in the left field seems pretty inarguable, and thus he lies without the remit of the write-off. He is not 'Hollywood'.

This rumination upon Kids brought me to the little cited but nevertheless ferocious and powerful Gravesend. Indeed the tale of Brooklyn's Salvatore Stabile, dropping out of college to self-finance a 16mm production would have appeared to bear all the hallmarks of the tenacity and conviction required to take Hollywood by storm. Alas upon reappraising the movie I found myself somewhat uninspired.

It was with some delight then, that I eventually made my acquaintance with has come to be known as Darren Aronofsky's directorial debut feature, 1998’s Pi. A startlingly original and provocative work, Pi’s harrowing vision of a fractured, contemporary dystopia is as relentless in its intensity as it is poetic in the haunting surrealism of its imagery.


An alumnus of Edward R. Murrow High School, Brooklyn, Aronofsky secured a place at Harvard University where he studied live action and animation. There he met collaborator and future star of Pi, Sean Gullette. His cinematic prowess was announced to the academic world with his senior thesis film, Supermarket Sweep. A widely celebrated work -also starring Gullette- which garnered numerous accolades around the globe, including reaching the finals for selection of the Student Academy Awards in 1991. This brought him the attention of the American Film Institute, whose Conservatory he attended and from which, he attained an MFA.

The Internet Movie Database cites a second film Protozoa made in 1993, however it is his next film Pi, which brought Aronofsky’s talent to the greater public. Reputedly made with a self produced $60,000, the investment of family and friends, Pi, sculpted in tremulous black and white, explores the transmutable line between insanity and genius and the dichotomy between the twin talismans of religion and capitalism. It is a remarkably assured and literate work and was duly recognized as such; Aronofsky went on to win the Director’s Award for Dramatic Competition at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, an honor for Excellence in Filmmaking from the National Board of Review, the Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay from IFP/West and the IFP Gotham Open Palm Award.


Pi tells the tale of Maximillian Cohen, an introspective mathematical genius, afflicted by sporadic episodes of mania and acute psychosis. Max lives in a tawdry tenement building in Chinatown, Manhattan. Background is introduced via voice-message, diary notes and these endow a semblance of chronology to what is otherwise a relatively abstract structure.

In the first of these expositional notes we are given background to Max’s psychological disorder: “9:13 Personal note: When I was a little boy my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once, when I was six, I did.” Max goes on to explain his terror of the darkness that followed, and more importantly how upon the return of his sight he realized something had fundamentally changed within him. Summarizing he explains that was the day he suffered his first headache.

In the second of these notes we are invited to consider Max’s hypothesis, his motivation and the outlying premise of the movie. It reads thus: “12:45 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 the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.”

Applying this hypothesis to the stock market, -a vast amorphous entity, understood through numbers whose values are determined by the separate machinations and endeavors of an almost innumerable multitude of forces- Max hopes to unlock the key to the understanding of its fluctuations and thus devise a practicable system for prediction of the very same.

Max’s pioneering research has unsurprisingly gained the attention of an aggressive Wall Street firm whose sole intent is global, financial domination. A chance encounter brings him into contact with a fervent member of a Jewish Kabbalah sect, who have attempted to interpret the wisdom of the Torah, through numerology. Both will stop at nothing to uncover the findings Max has memorized.

Meanwhile Max takes occasional respite at his ex-tutor, Sol’s apartment. They play Go, an ancient Japanese boardgame whose permutations are initially as infinite as that of a snowflake, and discuss Max’s work. Sol has retired from research following thirty years of analysis into the number Pi. We learn that on the eve of a breakthrough finding, Sol suffered a stroke which may or may not have been precipitated by his intensive study. Part of Sol’s process threw up a seemingly random two-hundred and sixteen digit number. The number it seems is perhaps not so random, the Hasidic sect too want a two-hundred and sixteen digit number, and Max in the course of his work has also uncovered one.

As Max accelerates toward his epiphanic finding, heedless of the warnings of his mentor against obsession and fanaticism, the fractures in his psychology begin to deepen. His attacks increase in frequency and strength. He hallucinates and succumbs to violent impulses. Tormented by the lusty sexual activity of his neighbor, harangued by the Wall Street firm’s surveillance and the strong arm tactics of the religious cult’s intensifying militancy he slips from genius into insanity. By the final reel we are unsure of what is real and what is the deranged hallucination of a man sent over the edge.


Max Cohen’s decline is stunningly and literately realized. The black and white cinematography creates a powerful aesthetic most tangibly reminiscent of David Lynch’s Eraserhead(1997), but also brings to mind the surrealist masterpieces of Luis Bunuel -Un Chien Andalou(1929) and L’Age D’Or(1930)- and respectively, the German Expressionist and French Surrealist movements typified by Robert Wiene’s Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari(1919) and Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman(1927).

The evocative tableaux are contemporized by the score which features original compositions from Requiem For A Dream collaborator Clint Mansell and additional tracks by such eclectic British artists as Roni Size, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, Orbital and David Holmes. The haunting central refrain comprises a disturbing synth line which sporadically unleashes the full potential of its drum and bass styled assault. Fans of trip hop, drum and bass and the transgressive music exemplified by Warp Records' output may be advised to purchase the album separately as it includes upon it some killers.


Pi is indeed a fascinating picture. As an exemplary showcase for one of Hollywood’s hottest young talents it remains pretty much unequalled. Released in 1998, when its auteur was but a mere twenty-nine years of age, it should serve as a potent index for the level and scope of what is possible at this young man’s hands.

For a debut feature release to encompass such broad thematics and profound precepts is remarkable. For it to be accomplished with this level of style, verve, originality and cine-literacy is astonishing. The possibility of Aronofsky hereafter becoming known as a “one-hit-wonder”, of this his “flash-in-the-pan” is a moot point in the perspective of his sophomore effort, 2000’s most vital picture, the astounding Requiem For A Dream.

In that both of these movies are difficult, gritty and harrowing dramas one would be forgiven for assuming that Aronofsky’s glittering future may not lie in the Hollywood system. Such an assumption, I feel would be wrong. Aronofsky at thirty-one was recognized by the American Film Institute as the eleventh and youngest ever recipient of the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal. A prize awarded for “talent, taste, dedication and commitment to quality film making”.

Such recognition not only by this, but also by that other, most venerable, of cinematic institutions, The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -in Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar nomination for Requiem For A Dream- must surely auger well for a force so clearly capable of shaking up an industry jaded under its own bloated pretensions.

In Batman: Year One -scheduled for release 2002- Aronofsky has been rolled out the red carpet to stardom. My sincere hope is that he can negotiate this path with the elegance, poise and dexterity he has heretofore displayed, thus fulfilling the potential evinced here and in Requiem For A Dream.


Well that about wraps it up for me. Apologies again for my ridiculous tardiness, but hey... “better late than never”, and “all good things come to those who wait”... and other cliches. Believe it or not, this has been an entry into JuiceJW’s The Future of Hollywood Write-Off, 10th August 2001, although somehow I feel that maybe I am the one some of you may have written off. If you have not already done so, -ye right- then please do take the time to read the other reviews. The authors are all splendid writers, and good good people. You won’t be disappointed, I assure you.

...and here they all are:

Grouch
MrsNormanMaine
Shadow8
kuuleimomi
DrJ008
dequebec
Sloucho
Stargull
Matt_Harney
mangiotto
Pffrdfdus7
alex_isit
JuiceJW
JonTurner
The_Wood
eplovejoy
Benho
Kenshin-Guy


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age