Pi Reviews

Find the common thread: the kabbala, the Japanese strategy game Go, the Dow Jones industrial average, the spiral of a nautilus shell, the soothing clink of a slinky, swarming ants and a jerry-rigged supercomputer named Euclid. That's mathematician Max Cohen's (Sean Gullette) grail, and its pursuit is quite literally driving him crazy--to the tune of blinding headaches, tremors, blackouts, hallucinations and crippling paranoia. But his anxieties aren't entirely without foundation: A cabal of Wall Street sharks has figured out that his research into vast numerical patterns might offer them control over the stock market, and it must be more than coincidence that Max keeps running into Lenny (Ben Shenkman), who's part of an Orthodox Jewish sect searching the Torah for a 216-digit number that contains the lost true name of God. And if they're after Max, then what's up with his mentor (Mark Margolis), a once brilliant mathematician who abandoned his own research after a stroke and keeps telling Max to take some time off? How about the sexpot next door (Samia Shoaib) and her offers of take-out Indian food, or the neighbor-child clamoring to see Max do math tricks? Shot in bone-chilling black-and-white and driven by a hypnotic score by Clint Mansell (formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself), first-time writer/director Darren Aronofsky's low-budget sci-fi psychological thriller has a stark look and eerily compelling aura of a ready-made cult object. Clever and creepy as hell, its beat is number magic--the point at which theoretical mathematical calculations become mystical numerology and the secrets of the universe appear ready to unfold in binary code--and its power lies both in Aronofsky's evocation of tightly wound paranoia and in his flawless dovetailing of personal obsession and cultural anxieties.