Stuff David Lynch could have made

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2001)

The main reason I went seeing Pi was the soundtrack... When I left the theater,the only thing that wasn't on my mind anymore was whatever music that was in it.I was so stunned by the movie that I couldn't bring out any words for the first 10 minutes I left my seat: never did I see such a disturbing movie,with such a huge impact. Aronofsky's visual style reminded me immediately of Eraserhead combined with the nowadays popular music-video style,which ended up pretty nice. But what struck me most,was the emotional impact the movie had. Never before were mathematics so exciting.The plot is pretty original and at some times it was pretty "scary":some things really made sense...What if there were patterns ...?At the end of the movie I thought like Max,I saw what Max saw (the hallucinations which were magnificently pictured) and I felt what he felt. The story wasn't full of twists,nor did Aronofsky spend much time on the characters.This movie is all about the madness and genius of Max,and how he can't live with it anymore.One of the things a lot of people wish,is here depicted as a curse:high intelligence. The whole plot is so bizarre that David Lynch could have made the movie himself,with the only difference that Lynch's visual style isn't this powerful. Sean Gullette is great as Max.This is the only movie I saw him in and I'm still wondering why this is. At my second viewing of the movie,I concentrated more on the soundtrack and it's a pity that it's all contemporary music,otherwise the movie would have been a possible timeless classic.The music is cool,but will it be in 10 years or so? The only downside to this movie is that sometimes Aronofsky KNOWS he is a great director and writer and this results in an undefinable form of arrogance in the movie:at times it seems like Aronofsky is trying to hard to make an intelligent and "difficult" movie,just to show off with his talent. We'll definitely hear more about Aronofksy (Requiem for a dream is said to be a great movie and I'm wondering what he's going to make out of his Batman adventure...) I just hope he sticks with what he's good at (bizarre visuals in strange movies) and doesn't become one of the real "Hollywood-people",who are more interested in box office than quality...