CAST: Suraj Sharma,
Irrfan Khan, Adi Hussein, Tabu, Gerard Depardieu. DIRECTOR: Ang Lee. SCREENPLAY: David Magee. PRODUCER: Gil Netter, David Lee. PRODUCTION DESIGNER: David Gropman. ART DIRECTORS: Dan
Webster, Al Hobbs, James Truesdale. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claudio Miranda. MUSIC: Mychael Danna. DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox. LOCATION: India, Taiwan, Canada.
Technical assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 3.5
CINEMA Rating: PG 13 (May be viewed by children below 13 with parental guidance)
When
their family-managed zoo in Pondicherry, India, is forced to close down due to
poor business, Santosh Patel (Adi Hussein) decides to move his whole family—his
wife Gita (Tabu), and sons Ravi (played at ages 7, 14 and 19 by Ayan Khan, Mohd
Abbas Kahleeli and Vibish Sivakumar) and Pi (played at ages 5 and 11 by Gautam
Belur and Ayoush Tandor)—along with the zoo animals to Canada. Here begins the story that is told in
flashback over a home-cooked vegetarian meal by an adult Pi (Irfan Khan), now a
professor of comparative religion in Montreal, Canada. Pi’s sole listener is a skeptic writer
(Rafe Spall) who had heard from his uncle in India about Pi’s unusual ordeal at
sea—a story, he is told, “that would make you believe in God.” As Pi narrates, the family’s sea voyage
with a shipload of drugged animals is aborted by a terrible squall that sinks
the whole ship in minutes, leaving only the 17-year old Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a
lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. One by one the animals go, until there
is only the tiger with Pi. How Pi
manages to survive 227 days with a man-eating beast at sea forms the meat of
the story.
The
best selling novel of Yan Martell, Life
of Pi, has sold over seven million copies, been translated into several
languages, and was in the New York Times
bestseller list for over a year, but it was considered an un-filmable
story. Now this Ang Lee
directorial masterpiece for 20th Century Fox ought to put to rest
all doubts as to the novel’s “filmability”, having seamlessly and amazingly
interwoven the best of the best of CGI and flesh and blood footage of live
action. Credit goes to Rhythm and
Hues Visual Effects for the most work on special effects. It is hard to believe that the Pi
character, first time actor Suraj Shama, was never actually filmed with a live
tiger on the lifeboat. How could it have been faked when it looked
so real?, one might ask, and the only explanation would be “computer
magic”.
Life of Pi is nothing short of magical, especially
in the way it reveals the paradoxical marvels of the sea to the viewer: its
rage swallows up Pi’s whole family, yet its bounty keeps him and the carnivore
alive; it grips the boy gutless in fear for his life, yet its very emptiness
fills his soul with hope for happier days. At night when all is lost in its pitch darkness it stuns Pi
with phosphorescence from a million jellyfish, and dwarfs him with a
luminescent whale leaping out of the unfathomable depths.
Experiencing
nature in Life of Pi as it may never
have been experienced before by the viewer definitely adds enchantment to the
film. It also ensures and
justifies the viewer’s attention to the spiritual dimension of the story. Not many may appreciate, however, the
movie’s cosmic outlook in matters relating to God. Having been born to Hinduism that introduced him to millions
of gods, the child Pi cannot make sense of a man crucified for other people’s
sins, and yet admits to an obsession with The Son powerful enough to make him
announce to his parents that he wants to be baptized (a Catholic). This aspect of the film is something
that demands mature interpretation in and for the moviegoer. While Catholicism is sympathetically
portrayed here—a priest (Andrea di Stefano) is shown slaking the boy’s actual
thirst by giving him a glass of water, symbolic of the Living Water?—Life of Pi does not pretend to offer
catechesis but merely demonstrates a young mind’s search for God. The boy eventually embraces three
religions (the third being Islam), much to the chagrin of his rational father,
but Pi’s naivete disarms everybody when he says he just wants “to love
God”.
A
lover of God, a true follower of Christ, will not have a problem with Pi’s
expression of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. Love of one’s enemy is evident in Pi’s
regard for the tiger—he could have let him drown when the beast fell into the
sea, but instead, he goes out of his way to get the animal back into the
boat. He even fishes and collects
rainwater for the animal to consume, hoping endlessly that the beast would one
day recognize his goodwill. Pi’s
faith in a Living God in time of darkness is made apparent as well, when at the
end of his wits he tearfully rails at the sky, “I surrender… I’ve lost
everything… what more do you want?”
There
is also a lesson in unconditional love and detachment which Pi cannot seem to
learn: love without expecting to be loved or to change the beloved to your
liking. For 227 days he has bent
over backward to keep the tiger alive, and yet in the end it remains a cold
feline, leaving him behind without as much as a goodbye glance.
Life of Pi may engage the viewer on two levels: as a
movie about survival, and as a meditation on the infinite. It’s difficult to avoid spoilers in
reviewing this film, so allow us this one last observation: towards the end of
the narrative, Pi is bedridden in a hospital in Mexico, telling his story to
two men sent by the Japanese Ministry of Transport to make a report on the
shipwreck. They do not believe his
account with the animals, demanding “something we can report, we can
believe!” So Pi gives them a less
incredible story, “admitting” that he was indeed with three other human
survivors on the boat—the cook, a Buddhist sailor, and his mother. The cook killed the two, and Pi killed
the cook. It is actually the same
story, but using human characters in place of the hyena, the zebra, the
orangutan and the tiger. The
Japanese men conclude that since both stories are hard to prove and neither is
relevant to their investigation anyway, they choose to believe the one with the
animals. The writer listening to
Pi’s accounts chooses the same, to which Pi utters an enigmatic, “and so it is
with God”. For isn’t it so with
belief in God? People may choose a
God they cannot understand but can believe in, or a familiar God that will not
strain their belief. Perhaps we
are reading too much into a movie, but honestly, if Pi’s story cannot make you
believe in God, it can certainly make you think about God.
