Friday, February 17, 2012

Easy As π*

* Pi, that is. The film. Just watched it and guess what? It's straight-up SF/tech-fantasy and though they are slingin' BS, they put in detail work to make it middlin' convincing.

As the storytelling POV is highly subjective, details are all it takes; you can never be sure if the lead is seeing reality, hallucinating or in touch with the deeper meaning of it all when he's alone. The tension builds and builds as he is caught in a tug-of-war between unlikely opponents -- and his own mind. There are (inadvertent and pleasant) echoes of Michael Flynn's In The Country Of The Blind and if you've had enough rockets'n'rayguns in your cinematic science fiction, this gritty, grainy black-and-white, calculator-lit trip down Paranoia Lane is quite the palate-refresher. IMO, a good way to spend 84 minutes. (Don't think this guy would be amused but his entry's "see also" will lead you down an often-misconstrued byway. Or "piway," as happens.)

I suppose I should have waited 'til 14 March but the way I habitually write dates, you'd have to be dyslexic to get it.

5 comments:

  1. I first watched that shortly after it came out and it was a mind-screw then. It's on my shelf of DVDs... perhaps I should re-watch it with a decade-later perspective. :-)

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  2. I saw that movies some time back, and yes, it is seriously weird. Good food for thought, though- beats the cookie-cutter zap and boom stuff passing for sci-fi currently.

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  3. I did not enjoy it. It seemed to revel in psychosis, weird for the sake of weirdness, which I gave up in high-school.

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  4. I saw it a couple times after taking a stab at a post-grad mathematics degree-I couldn't help but think that the characters in the film were no stranger than some in the program. My efforts clearly showed the best I could be was a poet but the brief flashes of insight showed me how differently the world appears to those that have the gift

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