Pi (1998)

What's it about:

Again it is about obsession. Aronofsky’s favorite subject. Here the protagonist, Max Cohen is madly driven to find patterns in the stock market. He lives with numbers all through his day. He is always busy with his computer 'Euclid' to find some number patterns or the other. He is also majorly into drugs due to his insomnia and panic attacks.

        His only interactions are with his mentor, Sol who is a former mathematician laid low by strokes. Both of them try to find some patterns in pi.

       Max also gets involved with some religious Jews and the Wall Street people. The former are after a 216 digit number which they believe Max knows. This 216 digit number is the name of God, they believe. The latter want Max to predict the stock market exactly. They are ready to offer him anything.

       Max doesn’t interact with his neighbors, be it the beautiful and forthcoming Devi or the young kid. Finally, he realizes that the damage done to him due to his obsession is too much and he decides to lead a normal life in the end.  

                                                                         

Hits

• Sean Gullette is perfect for this psychotic mathematician’s role. His bald getup further accentuates his obsession. His style and looks are very much like Edward Norton's 
• Some scenes showing obsession are really scary like the scene where Max cuts his hair and makes some mark on his head.
• Clint Massell’s BGM and the sound effects add to the chaotic mood

Misses

• It’s not very clear if the religious Jews and the Wall Street people are actually Max’s hallucinations or real. We see Max hallucinating at some points. So this doubt seems valid.
• The dialogues between the religious Jews and Max towards the climax are so strange to us. They sound like Greek and Latin
• On a little lighter note, the mathematics shown in this film are way too complex for a normal human mind. 

VERDICT

The first of Aronofsky’s movies in the obsession genre. Baffled to read that this movie was at a budget of just 60000$. But the content is definitely unique and as some poster said "truly original"