Pi (1998)

Aronofsky's startling debut is a hauntingly bizarre black-and-white fantasia about a tormented mathematician amid a swirl of numbers, Jewish mysticism, and numerological stock market theory. Maslin highlights its daring ingenuity on a tiny budget and its obsessive intensity as a victory of independent imagination.

Aronofsky's startlingly original debut constructs a paranoid vision from black-and-white cinematography, a pounding score and hallucinatory weirdness, sharing the protagonist's feelings of psychological disintegration. Maths meets millennial doom in one of the decade's true originals.

The film is a study in mental obsession and the risks a man takes in pursuing a dangerous mathematical quest that may unlock the secrets of the universe. Ebert praises its plausibility in terms of modern physics and math alongside its thriller elements centered on genius and madness.

The film is a brilliant intellectual adventure and dazzling bravura work of bold independent filmmaking with stunning high-contrast black-and-white visuals and energy. Thomas notes it builds suspense with dark humor but finds the ending a letdown that settles for a sentimental notion about life beyond mathematics.

The piece portrays Pi as an intense black-and-white burst of sound and image about a dysfunctional mathematical genius descending into mysticism and dementia. It is a good thing for American independent cinema even if it will not make mathematics sexy.

The film is a computer-age update of Der Golem by way of Borges, rendered as a Hegelian occult thriller that never fully sheds its sense of its own cleverness. While it looks great in high-contrast black-and-white, the overdetermined portrayal of the protagonist as madman wrecks much chance of drama and the maths is poorly understood.

The film is absorbing in its intimate, grainy black-and-white depiction of a maths prodigy’s obsessive worldview and conspiracy-tinged madness, but ultimately disappoints by withholding the expected breakthrough in favour of a chilling ending.

The critic finds the low-budget debut an enjoyable piece of paranoid US indie cinema with a roach-like energy, blending X-Files conspiracy with Tarantino-style flair and a British trip-hop soundtrack.

Aronofsky's striking debut is a vaguely sci-fi, Kafkaesque black-and-white religio-mathematical thriller that will turn heads despite limited narrative drive and commercial prospects. Harvey praises the imaginative images creating urban claustrophobia and the helmer's evident talent and infinite promise, though it may exhaust viewers.

The critic calls Pi a superbly inventive thriller and one of the most intelligent films of the Nineties, praising its edgy intellectual content that remains timeless. She singles out the frenetic camerawork, grainy black-and-white imagery, shifting light patterns, and aggressive techno soundtrack for immersing viewers in the protagonist's mindset while still conveying the human element of his vulnerability and loneliness.