Life of Pi is, throughout, a visually impressive and, in the end, a mentally challenging trip. Ang Lee’s adaptation of the best-selling 2001 novel by Yann Martel places a young Indian boy named Pi in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a hungry Bengal tiger. The events that lead to this bizarre situation are odd but less peculiar than the journey that follows. Mingling the fantastic with delusion and dream (or vision), Lee pushes Martel’s Pi through a journey of ambiguous nature. The principal objective is survival; but surrounding that goal is a possible parable about the character of the world… of life, faith and truth. Matching this spiritual context, Lee transforms the natural world surrounding Pi’s trial into something beyond natural. Lee’s imagery gives the feel that someone has turned up your visual sense knob past its maximum 10 to a Spinal-Tape 11. The world around floating Pi is hyper-ised – the oceans too calm or too wild, the colors of landscape and sky are beautiful but not quite correct. The castaway’s realm displays as if injected with some sort of growth hormone that has caused it to become a Dali-like globe canvas for Lee to paint Pi and his carnivorous companion.
Pi’s story, it was said,
will make one “believe in God”. An established but blocked novelist was told this
in India by Pi’s maternal uncle, and the author comes to visit the adult Pi,
now living in Canada, to hear the story and possibly gain some inspiration for
new book. Pi (portrayed at different ages by different actors but played as the
adult Pi perfectly by Irrfan Khan) narrates the film as he recites the story to
the would-be scribe. Pi starts by telling of his youth as a son of a zoo owner.
Central to this first chapter and key to the adventure tale that follows is Pi’s
acute interest in understanding God and the relevance he finds in religion.
Much to his rationalist father’s chagrin, Pi finds truth, or at least peace, in
the teachings of many religions mixed together – Pi explains: “ None of us knows God until someone
introduces us. I was first introduced to God as a Hindu. There are 33 million
gods in the Hindu religion. How can I not come to know a few of them?”
Pi’s life journey shifts
dramatically when his family decides to close the zoo and immigrate to Canada
where they will sell the animals. This decision puts large animals in a large
ship on a stormy sea:
Adult Pi: Now we have to send our little boy to the middle of the Pacific.
Writer: And make me believe in God.
Adult Pi: Yes, we will get there.
The ship sinks. Only one
lifeboat survives the storm and in short time there are just two left on that
small boat… man and beast. Pi and the tiger travel at the will of the ocean or
of God maybe; first separated by what distance is possible, then together in a
necessary truce.
Pi’s
ocean adventure is a digital masterpiece. I did not see the film in 3-D but I
can’t imagine it being any more vivid. Although you can tell the difference
between the live tiger (used sparingly) and the CGI tiger, the computerized
depiction is amazingly fine. Lee piles additional pseudo-natural wonders onto
the screen - a giant whale raising out of the ocean to pierce a super crisp
night ski, a battalion of jelly fish illuminating a glass ocean, a field of Meer
cats on a floating island. On the ocean, Lee’s visuals dominate the spiritual.
But the uncle’s claim remains hovering behind the images…”make you believe in
God” – what does that mean?
That
the story is a combination of thrilling adventure tale and mystic allegory does
not weaken its power in either mode. Rather the two themes team nicely together, the latter
focusing the former. Although you may be carried away in the visual, Life of Pi
is more than just a tale of the fantastic or fantasy. It forces ones head to
tilt a bit... makes you ponder why we believe what we believe… 9 out of 10.
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