PI (71)

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman

The Pitch: A strung-out, borderline-insane numbers whiz may have discovered (gulp!) the Secret Name of God.

Theo Sez: Music-video art perhaps, and the ending is a little suspect - a 'good' lobotomy, almost literally so, getting rid of all that dangerous knowledge and leaving our hero 'normal', therefore happier - but the images carry you along in this highly enjoyable exercise, texturing the plot like visual punctuation marks (recurring shots of a telephone, locks on a door, a swirl of milk in a cup of coffee) or offering relief from it (a rich, simple shot of tree-tops under starlight), but always underlaid with a wide-eyed respect for the twisted byways of human obsession. Taking the pseudo-mathematical occultism (over-)seriously may lead to confusion about its aims (hence, e.g. "Sight & Sound"'s comment that the film "would be much more fun if it wasn't trying to kid us that it's about so much more than fun") : it is in fact about as pretentious as a game of Magic, and about as mystical as the Holy Grail climax in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK - a knowing, kinetic pastiche, revelling in the mind-bending Weirdo Factor of brilliant-but-deranged scientists and hollow-eyed Jewish seers with long white beards, even as it intermittently sends it up (I loved the absurdly chummy young Torah scholar : "Max! Let's hang out!"). Only time will tell if this is just a stylish, cheerfully adolescent calling-card or the sum total of what Aronofsky has to say about people ; still, anyone with a jones for jagged editing and imaginative image-making will look forward to finding out.