The film has grown on me over the years for sure, but the sheer ugliness of the patchy 16mm photography is so hard for me to get past. There’s a guaranteed top 5 film of 1998 in there with some nice photography
Urban paranoia and self-mutilation—Cronenberg in videodrome and polanski’s repulsion comes to mind— the isolation and head shaving remind me of taxi driver
Stong early graphic match editing of trees turning into numbers
Lively jump editing with exaggerated sound mix (door locking, noises in his head)
Same dp as black swan and requiem – his two best films- Matthew Libatique—
Blends math, the torah, japanse go-board game and the stock market brilliantly- such a bounty of intelligent and exceptional ideas
Like my earlier review of Hitchcock today of murder! Showing someone acting guilty Aronofsky, even in his debut, isn’t afraid of taking an ingenious and stylistic approach to “how do I show someone getting a headache”?
POV reverse head mean streets shot (again he’d use in requiem)
Active score thorough mirrors the really low average shot length
Repetition of voice over giving time frame
Half way in he repeats the “stare into sun” line and and does it again for final act
Eraserhead is another film it lends itself to
Many fade to gray editing ellipsis
One nice effect of the lighting is the awful bags under the eyes of Sean Gullette
Top 10 of the year quality film or right on the fringe
[…] Pi – Aronofsky […]