--- title: "Pi: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/pi/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/pi" critics_score: 75 critics_reviews: 7 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Pi (1998): what the critics said Critics' score 75 from 7 reviews: 6 positive, 1 mixed, 0 negative. Most critics respond warmly to Pi’s intensity and invention, with praise clustering around its grainy, high-contrast black-and-white images and forceful soundtrack. The reviews repeatedly describe a film that draws viewers into its mathematician’s obsessive, paranoid thinking through sound and image. Aronofsky’s direction earns credit for ingenuity, while several critics find suspense and human vulnerability beneath the numbers, mysticism and conspiracy. The enthusiasm rests chiefly on how vividly the film conveys a mind under pressure. Reservations concern the storytelling: some reviews find the narrative thin or the ending disappointing. Sight and Sound offers the clearest dissent, arguing that the film’s self-conscious cleverness and insistence on its protagonist’s madness leave little space for drama. It also disputes the handling of mathematics, whereas RogerEbert.com praises its plausibility. The spread is mostly favourable, then, but the disagreement extends beyond taste in abrasive filmmaking to whether the ideas hold together. ## The New York Times — Janet Maslin Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 17 July 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. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/17/movies/critic-s-choice-film-torments-of-a-math-whiz.html) ## Time Out — TJ Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 25 October 2012. 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. [Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/pi) ## RogerEbert.com — Roger Ebert Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 24 July 1998. 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. [Read the review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pi-1998) ## Los Angeles Times — Kevin Thomas Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 24 July 1998. 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. [Read the review](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jul-24-ca-6541-story.html) ## The Guardian Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 5 January 1999. Festival review. 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. [Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/jan/05/features) ## Sight and Sound — Mark Sinker Fi1m's normalised score 45/100 (inferred from the text). 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. [Read the review](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/13) ## Empire — Kim Newman 1 January 2000. 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. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/pi-review/) ## The Independent 12 November 1998. Festival review. 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. [Read the review](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/london-film-festival-pi-1184359.html) ## Variety — Dennis Harvey Rating **. 19 January 1998. Festival review. 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. [Read the review](https://variety.com/1998/film/reviews/pi-1117436848/) ## Eye for Film — Jennie Kermode Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 15 June 2009. 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. [Read the review](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/pi-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/pi.md