mmmmm....grimy!

Rating: 9/10 (6 April 1999)

Pi is the best (well, only) arthouse film I've ever seen (ignoring Eraserhead, as most people do). Shot on grainy, grimy black and white with a kicking soundtrack, it's well worth seeing if you couldn't stomach Eraserhead. To me, Lynch's debut seemed completely random, noisy, incomprehensible and just plain annoying after a while, watching it on tv I found myself pining for ad breaks. Pi is similar, in that it has a strange, though nowhere near as strange as in Eraserhead, central character, it's shot entirely on (often over exposed) black and white and it has its moments of true surrealism (the person dripping blood on the subway platform and the brain, which he poked), but this (thankfully) is where the similarities end. I can't wait for the video release (although knowing the uk video distributors, there'll be about 6 copies available in the whole country, all in London).