Review of Aronofsky's Pi

Easily one of my favorite movies. This completely black and white film is much more complex than its color scheme and inlays a paranoid psycho-thriller within a surreal city scape. Aronofsky's direction is magnificent and captivating. There is an array of different kinds of shots in this movie coupled with some pretty spastic editing that adds intensity to the story. The sequence where the protagonist is walking through china town with his voice "restating his assumptions" is a great example of the experimental feel that this movie has. The shots go back and forth between a framing of the character's head as he looks at everything around him, and blurry, sped-up shots of the crowds and signs and life of the city. Then a shot of a slow zoom towards a tree blowing in the wind fades in, as it cuts back and forth between that and the character looking up at it, every time it focuses back on him, a distance is bridged and we become much closer until we are looking into his eyes. The film cuts to quick close up shots in normal scenarios, adding to the chaotic mystery of the character's mind. Like when the phone rings in his cyber-lair, it shows a very close up shot as the phone is picked up. No matter what he is doing, the camera seems to cut to something else going on in the space around him, showing that he is hyper-sensitive to his surroundings. These spastic cuts and close-ups get weirder and weirder as he becomes more paranoid about the people who are after him and it leads to some very surreal and avant-garde sequences. The brain in the subway sequence is bizzare and freaky but strangely beautiful. As he prods further and further into this brain, he keeps getting stopped by this fear, this train sound. It keeps cutting to a long shot of him from behind showing how alone he is in the abandoned subway station every time he pokes the brain. Eventually the music builds and the cuts become more frequent and it all leads up to a vision of a train rushing at him and hitting him. But then, after all of the chaos, there is a white screen for a good while, showing a complete opposite to the high contrast, high intensity shots and editing that came before it. Certainly out of the ordinary for most films I've seen. On top of the avant-garde shots and editing, there is a grainy quality to the whole film which I really like. It doesn't take away from the visuals at all, it adds a mysterious aesthetic to the whole story. If you're into thrillers, watch this film, its visual attitude, soundtrack and story are all fantastic.