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As Xan Brooks of The Guardian pointed out in an interview with Darren Aronofsky, his latest film, Caught Stealing, “could almost be his parallel-universe first movie, given that it’s set in 1998, around the time he was shooting his actual first film, Pi, on the same East Side streets.” But beyond just that full-circle kind of correlation, there are many marked similarities between Pi and Caught Stealing…even though Aronofsky didn’t write the script for the latter. No, instead, Charlie Huston adapted it from his own novel of the same name, originally released in 2004. A year that found the masses still coming off the “high” of the late 90s. Sobered instead by the new realities of the twenty-first century, which weren’t at all what they had been made out to be as the twentieth century came to a close. Or, as Aronofsky puts it, “People were looking forward to the new millennium. It was going to be The Jetsons. It was going to be sci-fi.” Turns out, it was just going to be a shitshow. And one that greased the wheels for the current horrors plaguing the globe (though the U.S. in particular).
Granted, many were still generally feeling plagued (and paranoid) in the late 90s, as Aronofsky shows only too well through his main character in Pi, Max Cohen (Sean Gullette). Although a number theorist, Max is what “the suits” would call “unemployed.” But that doesn’t mean his time isn’t constantly occupied, mainly by an obsession with finding the numerical pattern in everything, even a number as chaotic, as unknowable as pi. And, being the type of person who, the more he’s told something can’t be done, has to do it, it’s no wonder that 1) he thinks he can find a pattern in pi and 2) among the initial voiceovers the viewer hears from Max is that when he a child, his mother told him not to stare into the sun. “So once when I was six I did.” The result was temporary blindness and, in the present, randomly occurring, debilitating headaches. Even so, it seemed Max found it worth it to prove something to himself. More accurately, to find out something for himself.
At the same time, denial and avoidance are imperative to the way he lives, functions. The same can definitely be said of Caught Stealing’s anti-hero, Henry “Hank” Thompson (Austin Butler), who descended upon New York’s Lower East Side after running away from his dark past in California, where, once upon a time, he had a bright future ahead of him. For he was slated to become a professional baseball player. That is, until he, like Max, engaged in the kind of self-destructive behavior that was to doom his once-bright future. And, also like Max, Hank might be viewed as “barely getting by” on the financial front. This during one of the last eras in New York when it was possible to just “kind of be there” without an actual career. Or at least a career goal. But Hank’s lone goal is to forget, able to do so in part thanks to the alcohol perks of being a bartender at a dive called Paul’s Bar. With Paul (Griffin Dunne) filling in for the sort-of mentor role that Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis) fulfills in Pi.
Hank’s only other “distraction” is Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), a paramedic who increasingly wonders just how serious their relationship is (on a related side note regarding Hank’s “emotional distractions,” there’s also, of course, Bud, the cat he’s saddled with early on in the movie). But at least Hank doesn’t come across as asexual in the least, like Max, who clams up if his clearly interested neighbor, Devi (Samia Shoaib), so much as approaches his, er, peephole. And yes, the POV shot from the peephole is among the pivotal filming techniques that Aronofsky uses to assert a “unique style” for his debut. Even if it is the sort of style most commonly associated with debuts: deliberately “esoteric.”
Aronofsky’s directorial signatures have, needless to say, been quite fine-tuned since then, with Caught Stealing exemplifying his ease with “slickness.” But not the kind of slickness that was so aware of itself in the late 90s (see also: The Matrix, which seems to have borrowed certain elements of Pi, if for no other reason than modeling the apartment that Neo [Keanu Reeves] lives in after Max’s). And yet, part of what makes Pi such a distinctively “of its time” product is its highly postmodern sense of self-awareness (complete with the voiceover trope that was so popular in “edgy” 90s movies—case in point, Fight Club).
What’s more, the soundtrack of Pi is so authentically of the 90s that it would be impossible to fully entrench Caught Stealing’s sound in that way. Try as Aronofsky might with the inclusion of such signature alt-rock hits of the day (with Madonna’s “Ray of Light” also thrown in for some added “1998 musical clout”) as Garbage’s “I Think I’m Paranoid, Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun” and Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy.” But he also deliberately ties Pi and Caught Stealing together with a sonic thread. Namely, through Orbital. In Pi, it’s Orbital’s “P.E.T.R.O.L.” that helps add to the overarching feeling of paranoia Max is spreading to the viewer; in Caught Stealing, it’s Orbital’s “Satan” that gets used instead. This along with David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans,” which casually plays in the background while Hank is hanging out with Yvonne. Because Aronofsky likely couldn’t resist the inclusion of such a timely track. Even more timely than it actually was in 1998 (though the “techno version” of the song was released in ‘97).
Then, obviously, there’s the inclusion of Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” a highly appropriate track for a movie about a bartender. Though, of course, it’s about so much more than that. However, at its core, like Pi, it’s about a character who’s at the wrong place at the wrong time (the concept of “time” perhaps even extending to the very year he exists in), therefore entangling that character into a nexus of people that ultimately mean to harm him.
Hank has a much worse go of it than Max in terms of that form of abuse. Because, whereas Max does most of the harm (physical and emotional) to himself, Hank is so roughed up by the multiple parties in search of his next-door neighbor Russ’ (Matt Smith) key that it costs him a kidney. To boot, an obsession with “the key” takes on a different meaning in Pi, but it still means that multiple parties are fixated on getting Max to give them the information—the “key”—they want, just as it is the case for Hank and the literal key he’s found himself in possession of. So desired that even the Hasidim are after it, specifically the Drucker brothers (played by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio). And yes, Judaism is an instrumental aspect of Pi as well, with Max, like Hank, eventually turning to the Jews for help when he finds himself in painted into a corner with the other people who are after him.
Taken to the temple by Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman), who he’s been having frequent conversations with about the Torah at the local coffee shop they both frequent, Max is told by the head rabbi that the 216-digit number his computer has been spitting out is “the key to the Messianic Age,” for it can crack the code to the true name of God. The rabbi then continues, “[The high priest] walked into the flames. He took the key to the top of the burning building, the heavens opened and received the key from the priest’s outstretched hand. We have been looking for that key ever since.” Key, key, key, always with the key in these two Aronofsky movies. Not to mention Coney Island, which features prominently in each film for the purposes of Max and Hank’s proverbial “epiphany scenes” (well, one of them anyway).
With the tagline, “Faith is chaos,” Aronofsky taps into something similar, narrative motif-wise, with Caught Stealing. Though its own tagline—“Small town boy. Big city problems”—reveals how much more commercial Aronofsky has become in the twenty-seven years since Pi. And yet, it’s evident that the twenty-nine-year-old who, per The Guardian, “subsist[ed] on pizza and liv[ed] in a fifth-floor walk-up,” who “was anxious and ambitious” and who “had his eyes on the prize” still does have it trained on said prize. In this instance, proving that he can still go back to 1998 as if it were yesterday. As if no time had passed at all. For that’s what many people, based on the present circumstances, do wish. Maybe, with the right combination of numbers, the right pattern, a time machine can be created to get us all back there (or, more likely, those with money back there).
Until then, Caught Stealing will have to suffice for those seeking, like Cher, to turn back time. For, while Aronofsky might claim, “I don’t want to be one of those old men shouting at clouds. Or shouting at the TV set, ‘Elvis Presley’s moving his hips and he needs to be banned!’ The world is changing. I’m trying to lean into the excitement. It’s time to shut up, stop complaining and dance.” Or, better still, stop complaining and provide music in a movie set in 1998 so that at least the music is more compelling to dance to.
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Genna Rivieccio
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