Like Pi Auteur Theory

Films create a world on screen in which the audience immerse themselves. In the case of a film created by an auteur, the director’s vision and ideas are so great that certain themes can be seen throughout their entire show reel. Darren Aronofsky writes a lot of his films as well as directs them, and can consequently be seen as the ‘author of the movies’ as he claims them to be an art form. “The second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels.” Aronofsky’s key

Almost all of his films have some sort of religious message to be spoken for as well, whether that is the anti-Semitism stylised by Sara Goldfarb in the ending of Requiem For A Dream (2000), the deep-rooted environmental Scripture in Noah (2014), or the subtle parts of Jewish culture that come through within Pi

Requiem for A Dream, like Pi, is powered by its protagonists ' desperation and their descent into various private hells... Like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain centres on the self-isolation of a character trapped in his own bubble of existence. Whether by choice or compulsion, Aronofsky’s films ask the question of whether everyone is fatally trapped in their own private worlds.” – Matt Hills (501 Movie Directors, 2007). They are dark, provocative and controversial, usually uncomfortable to watch and covering taboo subjects of drugs, sex and psychotic episodes. Black Swan is largely based upon sex and Nina’s innocence, forcing her to succumb to the maturation process in order to progress as an artist, and also as a human being (much like The Wrestler). “Drugs are pretty heavily featured throughout all of Aronofsky’s movies, though typically never in a glamourized light. The jerky, strobe-filled club scene in Black Swan invokes a frightening hellscape, mirroring the character’s slow moral degradation; Mickey Rourke’s ageing wrestler Randy Robins snorts coke on his continued downward spiral past rock-bottom. And that’s not even getting into all of the terrible things that happen to the trio of junkies in Requiem For a Dream. Aronofsky also sheds light on the negative side-effects of perceived “lesser” drugs, like the diet pills Sara Goldfarb gets addicted to in Requiem that slowly loosen her grip