Life Of Pi

Life Of Pi

“He told you that you have a story that would make me believe in god.” This sentence transforms into both the heart and the biggest problem of Life of Pi. It’s the story of the Indian boy Pi. He is adrift on a lifeboat with four animals an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This boy’s life and any heart-wrenching situation.

What a picture! I had a few perceptions prior that it is a great movie with stunning visuals, and it’s adapted from a book which everyone thought will be impossible to do. Some great acting is done, the movie is full of many interesting and provocative ideas that are present in one way or another, but throughout the film that phrase kept sounding in my head.

Life of Pi has been directed by Ang Lee, who has won accolades for his work before, and is based on the novel by Yann Martel (whom I have not read) that is quite famous. It narrates the life story of Pi from the time when he was a little boy in India to the current time when he has settled down in Canada as a man. When a kid, his family had a zoo business which meant he had to be taught about the respect and authority of wildlife.

Pi is a Hindu by birth (and a vegetarian) but on screen we see him developing a respect for both Christianity and Islam which annoys his agnostic father. He states that “faith is a house with many rooms” which has space for many things including doubt as well.

It was when Pi turned sixteen that his father came to the family to say that Canada would be their new home and that all the animals there had to be sold because they were valued higher in North America. So they settle on a freighter and while they are on the ship, one evening there is a very violent storm. The freighter gets sunk and all die in the freighter, including Pi’s family, and he finds himself caught in a lifeboat together with several animals. The situation quickly becomes worse in that a tiger, Richard Parker, eats the other animals and pushes Pi off the boat onto a makeshift raft.

For the next 227 days Pi survives and is with Richard Parker and in that space both the young man and the tiger learn how to share the same environment. Together they face storms, whales, sharks, flying fish, hot sun, dehydration and a huge man-eating island. Language Pi comes to understand the tiger wants his survival, for both friendship and the risk of being his lunch.

It’s an amazing tale, which is both compelling and at some points funny, and when you watch Suraj Sharma as 16-years-old Pi, who is quite graphic in his performance considering that most of it was shot with green screen without the animals, one word comes to mind miracle.

The fact that Pi survives isn’t a spoiler considering that his story is revealed in a flashback nor it is his tale of survival that is the focus of the film. At the start of the movie an adult Pi is visited by a writer who went to see him following the advice given earlier in this review. The writer is searching for questions and getting to know the story of the shipwreck is what he gets. I will not ruin the ‘twist’ (and I use that term very broadly) ending, but there is a definite connection between Pi’s tale and the theme of faith.

In my opinion, the author’s argument and the meaning of the ending are quite self-important. Life of Pi clearly suggests that we all, and always, believe whatever we want to believe. In the end, all choices are neutral that there is no one single choice that is better than any other but what differs is that it has meaning to us.

I concur with the phrasing of such a statement, however quite a different issue rankles me more actually, we can believe what we believe, the question is, why do we want to believe in the first place. Pi’s story is not meant to challenged people who don’t want to believe in God to believe in God, it is designed to enable understanding as to why people believe in the God whom they believe in. The story of Pi is an allegory of belief but I am sorry I think it is an imperfect and somewhat attractive as well metaphor.

The plot of the movie appears to have been adapted from a work of literature. Successful as Ang Lee is in affixing breathtaking pictures on the screens and in them utilizing the 3D feature perfectly, the pictures somehow never appear natural. Everything seems too rehearsed and too much fake. It looks good but often feels empty. While in many cases Sharma as Pi does an admirable job, there is so much a single person can achieve without appropriate support. Technically Life of Pi is a wonderful work but its target of aspiring to bring in dramatic sensation is not fulfilled (except animal lovers target audience).

It’s a good film, and it’s worth watching if somebody can still find it in 3D. However, I felt it disappointed on the promises it has made in its marketing. Of the central concepts of the film to seek God I find them interesting and would like to know how they were presented in the book. However, the film is unlikely to have an impact on me as other tales describe. It may even be better to call it ‘a story which inspires attempts to understand God’, but I am not certain whether this is the goal of the producers.

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