Pi's originality creates a new sub-genre.

Rating: 8/10 (10 February 1999)

When I saw Pi for the first time, I had not yet heard about it, and so was struck by its pure hard-hitting originality. This movie is unique in technique, style and content. The protagonist, a neurotic, eccentric mathematician on a quest to find a mathematical pattern in the stock market, is handled with brilliant unpredictability. The brilliance and madness in his mind is communicated visually through sometimes disturbing metaphors (like the throbbing brain on the side-walk). The grainy black & white and the unusual camera angles evoke unusual emotions in the audience and are in keeping with allowing the viewer to see the world as the mathematician sees it: where everything, even trees, people and God himself works through mathematical patterns. One of the few faults of the film, I found, was the introduction of the stock-market fanatics which was not well developed. Excluding this could have left room for a more detailed development of the religious cult sub-plot. The strengths of the film, however, lie not in plot build-up or dialogue but undoubtedly in its unique style and content (achieved on a very limited budget). This makes it definitely worth seeing. In my book - a must-see.