Let's take a small trip down memory lane shall we? I was born in 1986 and underwent some sort of bizarre alternative upbringing, while not being extreme in as many ways as one could think of, it is nonetheless strange and formative. As I grew, I was sexually and/or physically assaulted a little bit and develops PTSD and antisocial tendencies. I further grew and things normalized, beginning to disassociate and drift rather aimlessly, seeking a place I belonged. This search ended up bonding me to one of my lifelong escapes: film. Since film touches on all genres abstract and personal, it is inevitable that I found a corner of the film market which appealed to my hurt, alienated sensabilities.
I'm trying to rationalize why this film spoke to me, and I'm disturbed by the fact that this was meaningful to me and was "My favorite film" for many a year. I didn't see this when it was new, in 1998 thank god. But I did see it soon after, perhaps 99, 2000, or whatever. I know I saw it in before Requiem, by perhaps a few years, and that came out in 2000.
Pi begins and we are thrust into the story of Max, the archetypical troubled genius played by Sean Gullette. He's a strange mishmash of trouble, as shown early on. I clocked it, we are less than 10 minutes in when he has his first "attack" and weird paranoid reality break. He is popping some sort of pills, he is referring to strange happenings, he is trying to explain his draw and fascination with mathematics. His character is trying to break some sort of code to predict the stock market. Math can show that there are patterns to nature, there are patterns to humans, and therefore since humans created the market there must be patterns to the market. Right? Right. We follow him as he does this, and it seems like he's basically figured it out, or is at least close.
But then, a computer error apparently happens, it spits out a random 216 digit number, and the circuit boards are fried. Max runs into a Jewish guy named Lenny who is trying to decode the Torah, Max's friend Saul tries to talk sense into Max and refers to a 216 digit number, and in the meantime Wall Street investors are (I guess) interested in Max's ability to predict the stocks. We follow reclusive and troubled Max as his attacks get worse, his grip on reality slips, and all these people surrounding him play their little games to try to get what they want from him...
I mean, let's just say first off what is good and what I originally liked. The music is awesome, and I definitely rushed out to the store to buy the soundtrack. My VHS copy of this movie had a thing that said the soundtrack to the movie could partially be found on Massive Attack's Mezzanine record, or it said it featured a track from that, or something, and I bought and got into Massive Attack because of this movie. The cinematography is a mix between cinema verite at times and completely over the top stylism which wouldn't hit mainstream until a year after this movie with The Matrix. This movie feels post-Matrix, but it was in fact filmed a couple years before. The acting is also really good, for an amateur movie especially. I mean, Sean Gullette isn't rewriting the book or anything, but he is entirely believable and has huge shoes to fill with this densely written of a character.
Now looking back after I watched it this morning, there is such a rush to stuff this movie full of "anything and everything" it feels a little bloated and there are dozens of ideas that never get focused on, explained, given time to have meaning, or rationalized. We give it a bit of a break because it follows a unreliable narrator, and because it's the 90's, but it's a flaw in retrospect.
One of the other major things I found about this, watching it in the modern world, is that it brought me back to a time when computers and the use of them was considered Alternative and/or Counter-Culture. To have knowledge of these things, to lean into them at that time was still cutting edge, and many people hadn't gotten a good computer at this point, so it seemed really crazy to have the main character be this computer genius. It was so Outsider to think about building your own computer, or understanding how they run, or living your life based around them. It's now so common and so required that it's more Outsider to NOT do that.
This and Tetsuo the Iron Man share a lot in common. They both center around people that are deeply immersed in some alternative world, it begins taking over their life, and it changes them. Tetsuo was made 10 years before this and is a lot more graphic, but Pi is more cerebral and philosophical. The plot concerns finding god, or at least meaning, when we get down to it later, and we follow someone who is given information without looking for it and struggles with what to do with that information rather than someone who is taken over by something else.
Pi is aso a deeply disturbing movie. Director Darren Aronofsky puts in crazy sequences, acoustic scree, body horror (another thing learned from Tetsuo), strange sexuality, drug abuse, and religion. This is the whole "anything and everything" approach, which hasn't aged well, but at the time seemed really revolutionary. It certainly predicted a trend, and given the next 10 or so years of cinema, this seems to be one of the movies that began a era. Especially because it's not like this flew under the radar. This was massively successful, launched Academy Award nominated peoples, and if Matthew Libatique doesn't eventually win, I will be surprised.
I wonder where this movie stands for me. I feel like watching this, at the time I did, was really good for me. Much like the internet in the early days, I felt like for once something understood me, and I connected. This movie showed me a broad spectrum of someone experiencing Outsidership, pain, disillusionment, a search for meaning, a brilliant understanding of certain things and a fundamental misunderstanding of others. Those notions all felt extremely familiar to a young, hurt child. I don't know if I'll watch this movie much after today, but it will always be special somehow and represent a time in my life. To be understood by something was meaningful, even drug feeling, and I was stunned by how much I emulated things from this film.
It's not a perfect picture, but it also represents everything good that amateur film can do. For a long time I've expressed that one thing I like no matter what is a "strong artistic statement", and if nothing else, this is certainly that.
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