Aronofsky truly was the auteur of Pi, taking complete creative control of the film, leaving no detail un-manipulated, and pioneering a new style of first person narration. Pi is the story of a brilliant and tortured mathematician, seen through the eyes of the protagonist Max Cohen; however, Aronofsky goes far beyond the parameters of traditional first person cinema, employing all aspects of the film, as discussed in previous sections, to help establish Max�s character. Pi brings the viewer into Max�s mind through the use of narration, close-up first person perspective shots, and a representation of his building psychosis using increasingly stylized edits and migraine-like sequences. Even Max�s apartment is a physical representation of the inner world of his over-active yet diseased mind; a mess of jumbled wires hide a supercomputer, and the only external contact present is a phone, which Max regards as an increasingly hostile intruder. His only view of the outside world from inside his apartment is the distorted fish-eye lens of the peep-hole on his door.



One of the great successes of Pi is that even as it pushes its audience away with its chaotic and disturbing visuals, it simultaneously seduces the viewer with an intriguing plot that is almost dangerous to let yourself fall into. While remaining curious throughout the movie, one cannot help but hope for some escape amongst all of the unpleasant images and sounds. Yet this place of comfort is inconceivable, as long as Max continues his pursuit of "The Answer."

By the end, when Max has removed the curse of his genius by drilling it out of his head, the film reaches its only calm and comforting scene, in which Max looks at a tree without attempting to dissect its mathematical nature. It is just a tree, and Max, able to appreciate this, smiles. This is the first and only smile that we see in eighty-five minutes of film.



Pi is the first full-fledged exposition of Aronofsky�s aesthetic. All of the film�s elements work to bring the audience inside the head of Max Cohen, stylistically communicating his inner obsessions and perspective of the world outside. The film literally becomes Max and lives through him.

Although Pi shares many things in common with Aronofsky's earlier and later works, the film stands alone as an individual stylistic statement: "By recognizing our limitations we got high production value. We turned our weaknesses into strengths. For instance, we could only afford 16mm film, but color 16mm looks like shit no matter what you do with it. So, my cinematographer and I decided to make as stylized a film as we could with black and white. We didn't want to make a gray film like Clerks. We wanted to make a black or white film, so we chose b/w reversal film. It's hard to buy, it's hard to expose and it's hard to process, but if you nail it, it's gorgeous. We couldn't afford a band to record the score in a studio so we used an electronic musician who composed everything with samples from his keyboard."

Pi is a classic indie film, and hopefully it will be remembered as such for decades to come.