Pi/π (1998) - Aronofsky's mystical thriller shows wild promise

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+ Best B/W Movie of the Year + Best Debut of the Year + Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year + Best Thriller of the Year

 

A mysterious poster that seems to promise a demanding watch here for Darren Aronofsky's Pi

Max Cohen is a mathematical genius and a pill addict. He is working on mapping out the mathematical pattern that may lie behind everything in the world but instead uncovers a number with 216 ciphers, which may be God.

 

Pi is written and directed by debuting New-Yorker master filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler (2008)) with co-writer/star Sean Gullette (Traitors (2013)) and Eric Watson (It Snows All the Time (2016)) contributing story elements.

Cohen, acted truly incredibly by the unknown Gullette, gets hunted by Jewish mystics and capitalists and by his own nightmares.

Pi is an extraordinary film in more ways than one, preceding Aronofsky's horrifying drug movie masterpiece Requiem for a Dream. His unique visual talent is already wide awake here with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Chi-Raq (2015)) handling the film's gritty B/W images, which finds patterns in everything. Pi is a beautiful film.

 

Related posts:

Darren Aronofsky: mother! (2017) - Bring a flask with you to this one!
Black Swan (2010) or, Manic Dance 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

The Fountain (2006) - Aronofsky's sensorial meditation on mortality 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 134k $

Box office: 3.2 mil. $ (North America alone)

= Mega-hit (returned at least 23.88 times its cost)

[Pi premiered in January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 84 minutes. The film's tiny budget was reportedly collected through donations from family and friends. Shooting took place in New York from October - November 1996. The actors were paid 75$ a day, locations, the camera and costumes were loaned, and the production shot without permits in New York and instead used a crew member as a lookout in case police was coming. Post-production costs eventually totaled more than the production costs at 68k $ against 60k $ for the production. The film opened #20 to a 31k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America. It was also released in several foreign markets and screened at festivals, but regrettably the foreign grosses are not made public. It won 1/3 Independent Spirit award nominations, a National Board of Review award and a prize at Sundance, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Aronofsky returned with Requiem for a Dream (2000). Gullette returned in Joe's Day (1998). Pi is certified fresh at 88 % with a 7.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Pi?

mother! (2017) - Bring a flask with you to this one!

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+ Best Feel-Bad Movie of the Year

The freaky, yet beautifully rendered, painted poster for Darren Aronofsky's mother!

A couple live in a large, isolated house in the country, where she spends her days fixing the house and caring for him, as he attempts to write another novel. Now a stranger pays them a visit, and their life comes apart at the seams.

mother! is the 7th feature from New-Yorker master writer-director Darren Aronofsky (Pi (1998)). It is easily his wildest and most traumatic film to watch since his tough-as-nails drug addiction-themed masterpiece Requiem for a Dream (2000).
mother! is an instance of a perfect conversation and disagreement-sparking mystery for its audiences, because it invites many kinds of interpretations. As a film, it struck me as if Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) was meeting Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973), perhaps in a bar that also had Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011) sitting up, ready for a fight.
mother! is a star-studded movie, and probably a poor sense of knowing what the film would be has led to some very poor audience reactions to it. - Expect a just somewhat conventional horror or mystery thriller, and you might be disappointed. - Expect another fierce, empowered - and empowering - Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games (2012)) vehicle, and you may leave it positively furious. mother! is a prestigious, high-budgeted art film, essentially, and we don't see many of them come out, which may also account for some of the raging reactions. It is also a very negative film, because it grows out of creativity based on negative emotions.
Lawrence gives another good performance, - although I couldn't help but wonder, if she would have been even better equipped for it, if she had been a mother herself. Javier Bardem (Goya's Ghosts (2006)) adds another eerie, troubling performance to his list of credits as Him, and Ed Harris (A Crooked Somebody (2017)), Michelle Pfeiffer (Up Close and Personal (1996)) and real-life brothers Brian Gleeson (Logan Lucky (2017)) and Domhnall Gleeson (Dredd (2012)) are effective as the intolerable, rude and outrageous outsiders that make it into Lawrence's home.
As stated the film can be read in a multitude of ways, but one is as a statement about the socio-societal subjugation of women, - here even a modern, privileged woman, - also in some way elevated through her own extreme attachment to her home and role as something of a servant to her husband. The more or less intended demeaning behavior and insults that Lawrence bears are so replete here that I couldn't help but be thankful that I wasn't born a woman myself. SPOILER As the plot unspools in something like cataclysmic insanity towards its end, - that will have some remembering the heated rallies of the 2016 US election and other cult-ish mass movements through history, - the mistreatment of Lawrence intensifies to a violent crescendo that brings the awful The Killer Inside Me (2010) to mind and was too much for my taste. Not least because I know that there is a small minority of men in the world who will enjoy this sickness.
mother! is made sparing no expense, it seems, with another (for me and many others in the cinema I saw it in) surprising major star appearance towards its end, an elevated fondness and use of the CGI effects that Aronofsky has become intimate with through The Fountain (2006), Black Swan (2010) and Noah (2014), - his only film I haven't yet seen, simply because it doesn't look too interesting.
Prepare to be provoked, shocked, mystified and above all else made uncomfortable, - in short, given a good spin for your money, when you head out to see mother!.

Related posts:

Darren Aronofsky: 2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Black Swan (2010) or, Manic Dance

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 35.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[mother! premiered 5 September (Venice International Film Festival) and runs 121 minutes. Aronofsky was working on creating a children's movie (!), when he had the idea for this film and reportedly wrote the screenplay in 5 days. The cast rehearsed for 3 months prior to filming. Lawrence was paid 8 mil. $ for her performance. Filming took place in Quebec, Canada from June - August 2016. Lawrence has described the film as an allegory of "the rape and torment of Mother Earth", while Aronofsky has called it a "psychological freak-out", a "punch", and a "punk movie" made on "a lot of anguish". The film opened #3, behind holdover hit It and fellow new release American Assassin to a disappointing 7.5 mil. $ in North America, where it fell to #5 in its second week and then left the top 5. It has grossed 17 mil. $ domestically so far, far below expectations for a Lawrence, Aronofsky or Bardem movie of this magnitude. While many critics have lauded it, audience scores were disastrous, and mother! is one of very few major releases to receive the "F" CinemaScore by audiences. Aronofsky has blamed the reaction on modern people's "rejection of science." mother! is fresh at 67 % with a 6.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of mother!?