(out of ****)
_Cube_ (R) ** _Pi_ (R) *** 1/2
Wanna make a science fiction thriller, but don't have the money for big-budget effects? Then turn to math, as have neophyte feature filmmakers Vincenzo Natali and Darren Aronofsky for their films _Cube_ and _Pi_, respectively.
_Cube_'s story is fairly thin: six strangers (Nicole deBoer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Wayne Robson, and Maurice Dean Wint) wake up to find themselves trapped in a 14' by 14' cube, with doors on each wall, the ceiling, and the floor. This cube, as it turns out, is simply one of many in a much larger structure, and the six try to find their way out of the labyrinthian prison--that is, if they can crack the mathematical code that will lead them to the exit. With a piddly budget of only $365,000 (in Canadian dollars), _Cube_ is more visually inventive than films that cost twenty times more. Natali shot _Cube_ on a single 14'x14' set, made to look like many different cubes through the use of different-colored lighting; the effect is entirely convincing. But for all his creative ingenuity, Natali and co-writers Andre Bijelic and Graeme Manson could have come up with a stronger script. As claustrophobic as the setting is, the film is remarkably unscary. The queasy promise of the chilling opening scene (in which an unfortunate prisoner is sliced and diced into cube steak by a booby trap) soon dissipates with the introduction of the flat, uninvolving characters, who predictably come at odds because of personality conflicts, anxiety, insanity, or any combination of the three. Too much time is spent on these interpersonal conflicts and too little on the mechanical ones, i.e. evading traps like those in the prologue. Adding to the narrative tedium are the often laughably amateurish turns by the justly unknown cast.
Aronofsky had even less--only $60,000--to work with on _Pi_, but he achieves the overpowering atmosphere of fear and paranoia that Natali and company obviously strived for in _Cube_. Aronofsky, Sean Gullette, and Eric Watson's story is sometimes confounding; it details an math genius's (Gullette) rapid descent into madness when he finally discovers a long-obsessed-over mathematical pattern to the stock market, Jewish mysticism, and, it appears, the universe itself. But story seems to be a moot point in Aronofsky's frenzied vision; the intent is to create a living nightmare of psychological horror, and he succeeds most unsettlingly through his use of stark, sometimes grainy, black and white photography; frenetic editing; and a pulsating electronic score. Many films purport to be something "unlike you've ever seen"; few films actually deliver. The stylish and scary _Pi_ is one of those few.
Michael Dequina
mrbrown@iname.com | michael_jordan@geocities.com
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