[7]
Director Ang Lee (The Ice Storm) brings Yann Martel’s novel to vibrant, cinematic life. Suraj Sharma plays the teenaged Pi, whose family is traveling by sea from India to Canada with all the animals from their family zoo. When a deadly storm sinks the ship, Pi finds himself the only survivor. But he has little time to mourn his family before his life raft becomes a refuge to some of the zoo animals — a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a deadly Bengal tiger. The first three animals do not survive the inevitable consequences of the food chain, leaving Pi and the tiger alone in an uneasy and prolonged coexistence at sea.
Life of Pi is a fanciful story told in flashback format, with Irrfan Khan playing an older, adult Pi, sharing his story with an interested writer (Rafe Spall). While the audience is never sure if Pi’s story is completely true, the film’s final act becomes so blatantly allegorical that we realize it’s not. Pi eventually reveals to Spall’s character what really happened — with the animals aboard the life raft each having a direct correlation to real human characters. Pi concocted the allegory to assuage his own trauma from the experience.
I found the original story, which takes up the bulk of the film, to be more interesting than the truth. So much so that I don’t really need the truth to be revealed at all. Part of me wishes it weren’t. It’s a big, climactic gimmick along the lines of The Sixth Sense. Maybe it’s because I’m an animal lover and I wanted all the animal characters to be real. Apart from that, I still enjoyed the movie. It’s a survival story steeped in philosophy that encourages the audience to think about things, which is certainly a commendable aim.
Life of Pi is a visually striking film, featuring surreal oceanscapes and Oscar-winning visual effects. The way the effects artists blend real animal actors with digital ones to create full, dramatic performances is perhaps the film’s greatest single achievement.
With Adil Hussain, Tabu, and Gerard Depardieu.
Academy Awards: Best Director, Cinematography, Score (Mychael Danna), Visual Effects
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Original Song (“Pi’s Lullaby”), Production Design