Not at all incredible... quite a bit of drollery in fact

Rating: Null/10 (5 October 2016)

Darren Aronofsky's first feature, Pi, is an overly ambitious undertaking suffering fatally from a number of different problems. Pi is more a psychological character portrait than anything--it fails as a thriller. The narrative overall is barely enough to keep me interested--and has little to no replay value for me.
Max, a paranoid mathematician, is searching for a numerical formula that will express all the patterns of life and seeks to 'crack the code' of the universe. It is, in so many words, a quest for the Ark of the Covenant. It is not impossible to do this film, I don't think, but I do think Pi has failed.
I did enjoy the style and felt it worked well. Stark lighting, manic cuts and camera operation, and surreal audio all add to the psycho paranoia that could have made this a great movie. It doesn't have a whole lot of technical flaws, in fact outside of the acting probably none.
But the flaws are dealbreakers. The film's Achilles's heel is definitely its delusions of grandeur. Perhaps I've misinterpreted something--but the film seems to think its correct?! The Grand Unifying Theory of Everything? Nobody knows (yet), but I promise you it is not an inexplicable 216 digit integer. You are thinly veiling mysticism and numerology as science. The easiest way to solve this problem in the context of Pi, drop the bubblegum pop pseudoscience and, if you want to pretend that he found the correct Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, just leave it to the imagination. It should have been a complete MacGuffin. Or, make it clearer that Max is just plain bonkers. The film seems to believe its own drivel. Make it about Max's descent into insanity, and you've got a potentially good story. It may be successfully arguable that the film doesn't believe itself and is trying to portray Max as insane, but that's looking like a stretch from where I stand.
The next thing is the bad acting from the supporting cast. Everything was at least working for me until the conspirators' trap was sprung, at which point I had to start wondering, "Are you kidding?" Overall my suspension of disbelief just fell like a house of cards at this point. Please note that I do however feel that Sean Gullette's performance was quite convincing and worked well throughout.
And finally, I didn't care for the soundtrack. It hasn't aged as well as other successful electronica soundtracks of its day. Overall I have to describe Pi as being both self-righteous and pretentious.