pretentious and number-illiterate, but good-looking

Rating: 4/10 (12 January 2000)

The basic problem with this film is its content. If we were to retrocede back to the times of Lumière when cinema consisted of the beauty of muted black and white photography in motion, and then watched Pi under that light, i.e. as a choreography of moving images, then this film wouldn't be bad at all. Actually, as I was watching it I realised how easy it was to turn what is essentially a bad film into a quite satisfactory cinematic experience: simply turn off the sound (if in the cinema, cover your ears). Whoever was in charge of the photography had a good sense of what he was doing. It even is related to silent cinema: the dream-sequences which show the mathematician doing a sort of brain surgery on his own brain are an obvious quote of or homage to Buñuel's Chien Andalou. So what is amiss with its content? First of all the actual mathematics behind the story are bogus. To anyone minimally cultured or with some interest in science will squirm in agony at such numeric gibberish; the sheer ignorance of whoever was responsible for the script is worrying. Am I to understand that nowadays American independent cinema is trying to sell its products to the same audience that has been bashed into dumbness and allergy to culture by Bruce Willis and his cronies? Instead of consulting with mathematicians, the people responsible to the film seem to have decided that "they won't notice, so what's the difference". But that is not the only problem with Pi. There is this annoying overacting that makes the film border on a parody of itself. "It is death" [referring to the number pi], cries the professor, with such exaggerated gestures and emphasis, that one can't help laughing at the whole ridiculous situation. And then there is all the psychosis and drug-addiction of the main character, which simply doesn't fit in with anything the film seems to be about, and gets on one's nerves. Finally there is the repetitiveness of the whole film. I think a well done trailer of the film would contain everything the long version does. But the best solution would be to edit it and delete the soundtrack, which would leave a short silent film that would resemble and be close to the level of Buñuel's masterpiece Un Chien Andalou.