Arrogant and tedious

Rating: 1/10 (21 January 2006)

Pi is a perfect example of the hubris of youth and the embodiment of the young film maker who fancies himself an *artiste* but, alas, has nothing to say. Here, the real artistry of the film maker is that he was able to get together some money to shoot the movie and then get it distributed.
The impudence of the movie, just like a pubescent teenager, is that it likes to ask age-old questions for which there are no answers. The arrogance of the film is that the director/writer seems to plainly say to the audience "Look at what important and complex things I think about and, if you like this movie, then you're smart, too." The intellectual topics that begin the story are meant to impress the audience with the notion that the film maker is a deep thinker. But when nothing comes of anything, when dialog is scanty, when lengthy empty scenes prove pointless, what the audience is left with is just deeply harsh cinematography that is brutal on the eyes. But, oh wait, this must be some artistic manifestation of the protagonist's childhood trauma. The very use of a stark but grainy black and white medium adds to the pretense of this project. Here we have a director, completely drunk on his mighty cinematic vision, taking a beautiful spark of an idea and turning it into road kill. I was relieved that scenes of Jackson Pollock-type visuals were not used to depict the protagonist's growing mental anguish, though this may have used up time better than the bugs and brain...but, oh, wait, these were artistic metaphors! In this movie, genius-as-a-tortured-soul comes off as unsympathetic, unlikeable, non-productive, unhygienic, anti-social, and creepy. While, indeed, there may be big brains who are like this, it does not make for an enjoyable movie experience unless it is put into some kind of central plot construct. To have three less than half-baked plots doesn't count.
If you want to see stories built around math theories, I suggest you watch the CBS TV show Numb3rs. Pi may have been a catalyst of some kind for this show, but, believe it or not, TV does it better. Only one star for an original idea for a film that, unfortunately, ended up as pie in the eye.