Pi (1998)

3,141 ... that's all I remember. But there are people who can go on forever. An endless progression of random digits ... or a clearly structured code to express our nature and explain our world?
At least that is what Maximillian Cohen thinks; an obsessed and solitary mathematician and protagonist in the fabulous debut feature by today's cult director Darren Aronofsky, known for titles such as "Requiem for a dream", "The Wrestler" or last year's "Black Swan".

Technological innovations today make it possible for us to recreate certain aspects of our environment from simple images to artificial intelligence by using maths, bits and bites and transpose it to our computers for example. But what if our real world is all in fact controlled by numbers? And what if you could describe and translate these numbers and use them to find out how our lives function ... or for example controll the stock market.

Maximillian Cohen lives alone in a small apartment with three extra locks at the door. Day and night he is sitting in front of his high-end computer searching for that one thing that will unlock the world. It may not even exist but there is something inside of him that tells him to go on. And there is something else inside of him he is struggling with. A physical disease. He takes pills against it. But from time to time he suffers from agonizing pain in his head.

An old man played by Mark Magolis appears to be his former mentor who himself was working on the mysterious enigma once but then suddenly stopped and turned his back on mathematics. He is also the only person shy Maximilian really talks to regularly and the only one he trusts.

But soon there are other interested parties. A jewish statistician who is part of a religious group and some influential businessmen who all would do everything to know what Max knows. Once more knowledge is a gift and a curse and can be turned into a weapon when it gets into the wrong hands.

His odd quest turns into an obsession that puts Max in big jeopardy. He gets more and more paranoid and loses the control over the things and himself. It makes him crazy. Or was he insane in the first place? Will the genius find an answer to this? Is there no way out?

The film is shot in dirty, corny black and white which enriches the disturbing atmosphere even more. The grainy images perfectly portray the nightmare Max is going through. Visually it reminded me a little of David Lynch's "Eraserhead".

This was Aronofsky's first feature film and he immediately found his style that you will recognize in many of his later films. Be it this, Requiem, the Wrestler or Black Swan; they are all similarly structured and pick out similar themes. Still each one has a unique touch and each of them was a success. Like Scorsese and his films about the mob, Aronofsky found his own little group of films that he is a master of. These intimate, disturbing dramas of broken individuals.

Now it's time for him to make something different. He tried with "The Fountain", not a disaster, but his weakest flick, I think. I have no doubt that one with his talent is able to handle various genres. Right now he is in talks to transpose the story of Noah to the big screen ... there he can try again.