It's fitting that this should be Darren's debut work, seeing as how this is the first of his filmography that I'm personally seeing. The film itself is alright, but there are things that hold it back.The pros specifically lie in the film's style and direction. The grainy black and white aesthetic compliment the oppressive and obsessive tone of the film. And the same goes for Darren's directing. While I personally wouldn't call it anything 'groundbreaking', the composition of the shots themselves are great and again play along with the film's tone and theme of obsession and paranoia.The film's cons however lie in its writing and structure. The film's structure is scatterbrained to say the least. While the story isn't difficult to follow, the way the story is presented and concepts that are dotted throughout make the film a bit harder to process. And the surrealist elements while not exactly intrusive don't really help alleviate this confusion. The writing as well isn't really much to write home about, and in some instances can be written off as pretentious.As I said before "Pi" was my introduction to Darren Aronofsky's works and from what I've seen, I can't really say that I'm too impressed. Granted I have yet to see "Requiem" or the highly controversial "mother!", so hopefully my mind will change then. The central idea of this film is certainly fascinating despite its loose math, and based on the direction and style alone is certainly worth a watch or two.

I didn't really want to review this film as there's not a great deal to say about it that people haven't already. Darren Aronofsky's debut film is a bizarre, surreal, intelligent, paranoia fuelled film about a mathematician who's trying to uncover the patterns of the universe.The main reason I wanted to talk about this film, is that Clint Mansell's incredible score is in my opinion one of the best scores I've heard in any film. It's an expertly constructed piece of work that helps to elevate every aspect of this film. The score is perfectly intertwined with the central character of the film, and works as his inner monologue to reflect his different mental states throughout the film. From being eerie to panic ridden to sheer mania it's a bold piece of work. That when I found myself drifting from the film it was the score that kept sucking me back in with it's intoxicating atmosphere.The film on the whole is pretty good, but without the score I don't think this film would've worked nearly as well as it did. I would recommend watching this film for the soundtrack alone.

This is my first ever review. I saw the IMDb suggestion to write a review. I then started to think about what movie I would review. It took me about 5 seconds and the answer was Pi.When I first watched this movie I had no expectations at all. I was very open minded, so was the movie. It's a low budget indie masterpiece.It's about life, existence, god, genius and insanity. It's about the market and structure in chaos combined with a claustrophobic feeling.I don't like to mention more because you should not know about any movie before you see it.The movie really touched me deeply. It's one of it's kind.Still after 16 years I watch this movie every now and then because it's unique.

First of all, this movie is a annoying hell of blurred black-white scenes. I don't understand this want-to-be avant-garde way of making movies. Especially when it is possible to make clear colour-scenes now a days, also in 1998. Is this what bad directors do, to cover their incompetence, and cheat all the upper-class snobbish reviewers, who think that everything that is different from Hollywood-movies are great movies? I also get tired of Hollywood-movies - but there are also other bad movies, than the tedious stuff from Hollywood. Alone this drag the movie several stars down: DON'T MAKE BLACK-WHITE MOVIES WHEN COLOURS ARE INVENTED! And especially not as blurred and unclear as this. I can't barely see what happens in this movie, because everything is so dark and blurred.Furthermore, the story is also quite dull. It seems very interesting at first sight. But if you - as me - are patient enough to go through the entire movie, you will find yourself after the movie thinking: what's the point of this? What's the conclusion? What are this movie trying to tell me?I will go down to the movie store, sell my DVD-copy, and buy an other movie instead.