I finally got around to watching Darren Aronofsky's provocative 1998 movie, Pi, last week, and it was one of those films that left me highly intrigued, but with a bit of a post-viewing haze. Nothing about it is gift-wrapped for the audience, and while I appreciated the complexity, I certainly wasn’t finished digesting it when the credits rolled.
This is the type of situation I believe should be tailor-made for the IMDb message boards, which so often leave me shaking my head dismissively when I actually sift through them. For many movies, these forums are dominated by misinformation, foolishness and disturbing behavior. For instance, if you enter IMDb’s Watchmen board right now seeking information and discourse, you’ll have to sort through threads with titles like, “Know this'll sound stupid, but how much sex is thier?” [sic].
But it’s often a totally different vibe on the boards of older films (let’s say at least three years past release, to be safe), and when I want a shared experience of
interpretation, almost like my Comp Lit classes in college, IMDb forums scratch my itch the best. Taxi Driver, Kicking and Screaming (the 1995 one), Memento – the IMDb boards for films like these are worth investigating.
And that’s where I went seeking closure after watching Pi.
Just a bit of background about the film: It’s a suspense thriller about a gifted mathematician who believes that life can be reduced to a series of numeric codes, and that as he researches these patterns he is approaching an epiphany. I’m not going to set it up any further than that, because I think new viewers should go in fresh. Just know that Pi’s draw is that it’s artistically-crafted and stimulatingly abstract and ambiguous.
I would have enjoyed discussing the movie in a coffee house with a large group who had also just seen it, but practically speaking, the Pi IMDb board was the closest I was getting to such a situation. It’s littered with comments from others who were similarly consumed by the film, questioning and debating in the hopes of further deciphering its meaning. Rather than a conversation in real time, this dialogue has been going on for years – five pages back on the board (which are in reverse chronological order) takes you to June of 2007, and folks were still interpreting away.
Certainly there are other sites you can visit on the internet for extended commentary about films like Pi, but these are usually closer to reviews or essays. Within IMDb, it’s much more conversational. The appeal stems from both the information and the interaction. After spending about a half an hour reading the Pi board, I literally had a smile on my face, stimulated by the intelligent and amused by the absurd. In fact, I wish I could have had the same experience after watching a film like Taxi Driver for the first time (probably sometime in the early 90’s), because it wasn’t until years later, in college, that I really engaged other film fans in discussions of what Travis Bickle did or didn’t do.
So while I don’t necessarily recommend using the IMDb message boards to get information about 2009’s summer blockbusters (unless you’re far more patient than myself), I definitely think that they have worth over the long run. Next time you leave a heady movie with outstanding questions, give IMDb’s forums a gander and see if it doesn’t enhance your perspective.