Life of Pi (***)
Directed
by: Ang Lee
Starring:
Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Adil Hussain, Gerard Depardieu, Rafe Spall
Seen:
December 31st 2012
***
Out of ****
Life
of Pi is most certainly one of the stranger stories I’ve ever come across, both
in book and movie form, with the two not differing as much as expected. Rather,
the movie is merely a condensed version as opposed to a much changed version of
the book. Visually this movie is a feast without being overpowering in a
Transformers assault of the synapses kind of way. It’s a rare thing to have
animals play such an integral part in a live action (even though it’s suffused
with visual effects) movie without it also being strictly a kids movie with
talking animals, but in Life of Pi that is exactly what happens: a Human and a
Bengal Tiger form the principal cast, while an Orang-utan, a Hyena, and to a
lesser degree a Zebra forms the supporting cast.
Piscine
Molitor “Pi” Patel (Sharma) is an Indian boy growing up with a strange love of
religion, as at age 12 he is a follower of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.
His father owns a zoo where Pi has a close shave with their new Bengal Tiger,
Richard Parker, named so after a comical clerical error. As he grows up his
father (Hussain), who thinks far more rationally, attempts to get him to drop all
the religion and rather simply be a normal boy, but Pi’s life is on its own
trajectory. When their zoo picks up financial troubles, his father decides to
move his family to Canada, where they will sell their zoo animals. Soon they
are ready to go, all packed up with the animals in cages and everyone on a
container ship, the Tsimtsum. This is, in a movie of just over 2 hours, about
the first 20 minutes of the movie – just the setup, what comes is the real
story, the story of Pi surviving the complete shipwreck of the Tsimtsum, and
ending up on a lifeboat with Richard Parker, a Hyena, an Orang-utan, and an
injured Zebra.
Pi’s
227 days on the lifeboat is what the movie is all about. His fight for survival
while the Hyena taunts him and kills the Zebra and the Orang-utan faces off
with the Hyena, which in its turn faces of with Richard Parker, is the stuff of
legend. Pi “trains” Richard Parker with a whistle and whatever food he can
salvage from the ocean, be it turtles or flying fish, while the two brave
storms and calm and whales and strange floating islands filled with Meerkats,
millions of them. The story is a beautiful image of the fight for survival on a
physical level, but even more so on spiritual and emotional levels, and it will
leave you cold as one last curtain is drawn open.
Visually,
no other movie quite like Life of Pi has ever been made. The realism of the animals
as well as the calm, wild, unforgiving, and menacing ocean is astonishing.
Suraj Sharma is fantastic in a taxing role. Life of Pi however presents a whole
image that is far brighter than some of its darker parts, and in some ways this
can come across as a complete denial of the dark for the sake of producing a
more digestibly entertaining movie. That being said, the experience of watching
Life of Pi is unlike most other movies I’ve ever seen, and for that I give Life
of Pi 3 stars out of a possible 4.
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