So, what you’re telling me is that Darren Aronofsky has been making irritatingly stressful movies since the beginning of his career? Gotcha.
Mathematics and mumbo-jumbo aside, at the nucleus of Darren Aronofsky’s debut Pi is a simple story of a stubborn man frenzied of not knowing a definitive answer for existentialism; he’s an intellectual obsessively trying to make complete sense of the universe like its a code or like it can somehow be comprehensively solved into a permanently determined variable. Pi is purely the rough and gruesome retelling of the “individual wanting to understand” tale.
Clint Mansell’s berserk score does massive numbers to the quality of the film. There are plenty of interesting low-budget aesthetic decisions that Aronofsky aptly showcases. And, as with most of Aronofsky’s projects, the editing is sharper than a katana.
Notably, however, the narration is sometimes repetitiously excessive and almost unnecessary in consideration of the grand, telling visual depiction of sequences. The exterior story sometimes quickly reaches arbitrary boundaries that appear less faithful to a logistic consistency or organized foundation, yet they don’t nearly jeopardize the experience of Pi since they aren’t nearly meant to be the main thrust or moral objective of the project.
Believe me, the journey of what happens to our troubled main character is what’s key in Aronofsky’s debut, not what’s occurring outside the mental human experience whether it has to do with the crazy mathematics or the complex Hebrew language. For what seems like 84 minutes of sheer mania, Pi surprisingly just wants to exclaim to the audience a pretty straightforward message.
This would low-key make for a pretty sweet supervillain origins movie though, right? Or, superhero?
Verdict: B+
Disturbance in Art (Ranked List)
“Pi” is now available to stream on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
Burning the Celluloid 
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