π [Pi]

Holed up in his Chinatown apartment, electronics whiz Max (Gullette, who, with the director and producer, came up with the film's story) is obsessed with finding the underlying numerical pattern behind the global stock market, since he believes everything in the universe can be expressed in purely mathematical terms. Is he staring into the mysteries of creation? Or is he just a disturbed loner whose off-kilter psychosis has spurred him to find patterns of meaning where none exist? Aronofsky's startlingly original debut recalls the inspirational fervour of Eraserhead, as it constructs a paranoid vision from b/w cinematography, a pounding score, and flashes of sheer hallucinatory weirdness. We share Max's feelings of imminent psychological disintegration as the film probes our own insecurity in the face of the eternal. Maths meets millennial doom in one of the decade's true originals.