Guerrilla filmmaking of mathematic nightmare

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 1999)

There are many scenes that I can't get out of my head from this very smart debut of Darren Aronofsky's. Most notably is when Maximillian (played by co-writer Sean Gullette) rips open his brain. Why? Don't let me get into it, you will have to see it for yourself.
I don't know how PI was thought up, but it's a dark, disturbing, and interesting creepy-crawly sort of brain stimulator. You don't have to be a math whiz to enjoy it (I am certainly not one) but at some moments it helps. This is almost a science fiction sort of thriller, in a socialistic way. You have to be a big thinker, like the main character, Max.
Max is a genius, he constantly computes equations given to him by a neighbor kid in the building he shuts himself in at. He is also a mentally tortured genius, obsessed with a number he tries to calculate with his homegrown computer. He is also a weirdo, who shaves his head after too many violent headaches, which may be caused by his abnormal gift (which may had come from staring at the sun when he was a child). Odd premise, eh?
But back to the number, which ultimately sets up the stage for the cyberkinetic noir/video-droned Hitchcockian thriller. The number is mythically the key to either the stock market or God. Either way, he is hunted down both by shady Wall Street henchmen and a gang of Rabbis (?) who desperately need him to compute the number for their great fortune. But Max believes he is the chosen one and searches for the numerical answer himself, even as it pulls him into an abysmal downward spiral of madness.
This movie is as weird as it gets. But screw traditionalism. This is one of the most thoroughly creative and oddly developed pieces of work in modern film.