Pi

3.141592... Our school teacher claimed that math is fun - but, as Aronofsky proves here in this stylized rollercoaster ride, she was lying, because math can make you go completely psycho. A very Lynch-style movie and, whether or not it corresponds to your taste in movies, it will certainly leave a deep impression in you. Primarily thanks to the extraordinarily portrayed atmosphere of paranoia (or whatever that feeling is called). While the viewer experience isn’t so intense throughout the movie, you will be haunted by Pi for a long time after. Probably for as long as it takes you to say the entire value of π. (23.07.2006)

Darren Aronofsky's first film didn't sit well with me, which I blame on the excessive amount of mathematical phenomena, numbers and whatnot. It's admittedly a pretty flimsy excuse that can barely compensate for my (by local standards) low rating, but I take Pi as a warm-up and a gateway to other depressing films by the director – in fact, I found many elements and scenes here that also appear in Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, for example. The cinematography is great, as is the editing, the sound and the properly grainy-black-depressing image. In short, a film I probably wouldn't watch a second time, but I that certainly don’t want to disparage, because it certainly has its artistic merit. (30.04.2011)

Another disappointment from Darren Aronofsky. I almost can't believe the same guy made the great The Fountain. Pi is stupid. A nonsensical bluff about a genius mathematician whose seizures are nothing like the hallucinations from Requiem for a Dream (yes, they are also as long, expected and headache-inducing) and who spends the whole time poring over numbers that perhaps 99% of the audience cannot understand, but the director keeps overwhelming us with them, perhaps to give us the impression that this weird freak is really a genius. He wants to figure something out, but no one knows what. Except for his similarly afflicted professor. And some kind of company that keeps chasing him. And a Jewish secret sect that is looking for the same number as our protagonist, and looking for it because that number means... a stupid point. Seriously, I had my work cut out for me to make it to the end - the unintentionally funny (i.e., awkwardly ridiculous and self-parodying) end. Such a short film and yet so long. Thanks at least for the black and white pictures, which I have a weakness for.__P.S. I never liked math, but that's not related to my rating. (20.11.2011)

Insane weirdness that sucks you in at the beginning and spits you out absolutely exhausted by the end. It’s one of those films that I don’t really know how to judge, I could give it two or even four stars with a clean conscience. The combination of black and white images, psychotic music and the various noises in the background works wonders, while the short runtime makes Pi something relatively bearable. I’ll never watch it again, though, I’m not a fan of maths, and letting someone make me feel depressed voluntarily isn’t among favourite activities, either. My rating is something between 40 and 80 percent… (12.09.2008)

Grand existential truths, wrapped up in seemingly indecipherable mathematical equations. And in a spectacular display of filmmaking. By combining black-and-white images and penetrating sounds, Darren Aronofsky works wonders, just as he did in Requiem for a Dream. (01.02.2004)