• 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
  • Highly recommend