By Aavirash mitra.
A 1998 surrealistic psychological thriller called “Pi” was released in a black and white reversal format, its budget was a mere amount of $60,000, the majority of which was borrowed from close friends and neighbors promising a fulfillment of the debt in the coming year. The film released on July 10th 1998, it grossed over $3 million, it bagged the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. “Pi” was Darren Aronofsky’s directorial debut, and believe me, the neighbors were satisfied.
Darren went to Harvard University to study film and social anthropology, winning various academy awards especially in his recent film Black Swan, he has taken the Hollywood film industry on a toll for his own unique and surreal plot structures which he has so successfully brought to life with his “sense of lens”. He continuously collaborates with one of the most well-known musicians and composers for his original soundtracks, especially like Clint Mansell who has composed the music for pie, Black Swan and other famous films like Requiem for a dream. Aronofsky almost brings a completely new genre to the film industry with the work he produces, and the impeccable way he brings romance, thriller, murder, surrealism, psychological elements, tragedy etc. all into unison.
Let me give you a taste of how “Out of the box” this guy really is.
“When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so when I was six I did…”
Pi features several references to mathematics and mathematical theories. For instance, Max (the protagonist) finds the golden spiral occurring everywhere, including the stock market. Max’s belief that diverse systems embodying highly nonlinear dynamics share a unifying pattern bears much similarity to results in chaos theory, which provides machinery for describing certain phenomena of nonlinear systems, which might be thought of as patterns.
Max’s belief slowly turned into a goal, towards which he inevitably had to run. He wanted to prove that just like everything in this world revolves around a certain pattern and sequence, similarly the stock market also follows a certain pattern, which if discovered will equal to….Chaos.
There are various films made by Darren Aronofsky which a majority of the audience most definitely follow, I hope, because if you haven’t WATCH NOW!!!
Some are:
- Requiem for a dream
- The Fountain
- The Wrestler
- Black Swan
- The Fighter
And the *Can’t Wait” upcoming 2014 film, Noah.
There are some great film makers in the world, making some great masterpieces, which is of course outstanding, in its essence, but when a person decides that thinking out of the box is not enough, so he goes on to creating a completely different box altogether parallel to each other, it is something to take note of. This article is not just information and remembrance of his work, but it’s a tribute.
And what can be more perfect than to end it with a quote from one of his masterpieces.
“Our bodies are prisons of our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.”
