Tell me a story

I’m going to try to be even-keeled here. I want to start this review with thunderous exclamations of how much I loved Life of Pi, about what a magical feat of story-telling this is,  about how beautifully it was filmed, about how much it touched me. I don’t want to look for flaws. I don’t want to pick at it. I want to rave about it and keep it in my memory as a perfect film that I’ll be able to return to in the future when life gets rough and I’m lacking inspiration. I want to protect this movie and hold it precious. But that’s not a real review. And plus if I wanted to do only that, I could just stop writing now, since I’ve pretty much just said all that.  So I’ll try to review this the way I would any other movie. And I’ll try to limit the usage of the word “great.” Promise.

Life of Pi begins in the present in Montreal with the title character, Pi (played as an adult by Irrfan Khan), engaged in conversation with a writer (played by Rafe Spall). The writer recently had one of his stories die on him before he could finish it, but in the process of trying to write it, he met Pi’s uncle. Pi’s uncle told him to go to Montreal to find Pi because he had an amazing story, one that would have the writer believing in God. So he goes, and Pi welcomes him into his home, and Pi begins telling his story.

He starts in the beginning with how his parents met and how he got his name. Pi’s family, which included his parents and an older brother, lived in Pondicherry, India where his father owned a zoo that offered the family a comfortable lifestyle. The household was split in terms of spirituality. A victim of childhood polio, Pi’s father found himself putting his faith in the Western medicine as opposed to religion; the medicine had done more to help him than any of Hinduism’s 300 million+ gods. Pi’s mother was a practicing Hindu, feeling it connected her to her culture and heritage.  Pi leaned more to his mother’s side, being spiritually inquisitive from a young age, but then as grew he shot past her, embracing both Christianity and Islam along with his Hinduism. He was simply seeking God, and he wasn’t particular to the form he found it in. God, or rather belief in God, is a central topic in the film.

Wen Pi reaches his late teens (and is now played by Suraj Sharma), his father decides to sell the zoo animals and relocate the family to Canada. The family and all the animals board a Japanese ship to Canada, and one night there is a huge storm. And as you know from the trailers (or the book if you read it; I didn’t, so all I knew about this movie going into it was what I’d seen on the trailers, which I think made it a much better experience for me, but I digress), Pi ends up on a lifeboat separated from the ship. His company on the lifeboat is a handful of animals from the zoo, including one Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The movie is about their survival on the open waters of the Pacific. Obviously it’s no walk in the park, or, more appropriately, no swim in the lake. And while you might be thinking that knowing that Pi survives undercuts the suspense, I can assure you that this movie will have your heart pounding.  The situation is so captivating that we’re completely caught in the moment as we watch, at times forgetting that we know the future. When Richard Parker lunges at Pi, it’s frightening because we see a powerful animal versus scrawny boy. You’re not thinking about adult Pi in those moments, only young Pi who is super vulnerable out there. You can’t not worry for him.

And boy do they do a good job of showing just how vulnerable he is. I can easily say that no movie has made me so afraid of the sea as this one has. I’ve seen tons of underwater footage in my life, but I never really got a concept of the ocean’s vastness until this movie. It felt like they really took Suraj out on a lifeboat into the middle of the ocean and filmed him. I remember there was one scene in particular in which Pi is completely underwater where I found myself holding my own breath and fighting vertigo. And if that at all sounds like a bad thing, it’s not. It’s an amazing thing. I wish all movies would affect me that much, even if the sensation evoked is fear.

I’ve already hinted at how beautiful this movie is, but I haven’t done it justice. I haven’t even used the word “enchanting” yet! This movie is enchanting. The special effects and cinematography work hand in hand to create some truly magical images. There are shots of water I could have watched for hours. There are scenes with the night sky lit up with stars as far as the eye could see. There’s a night scene in particular in which jellyfish fill the ocean with bio-luminescence, and it’s just breath-taking. Director Ang Lee is no stranger to crafting visual wonders on the big screen—he directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—but he created a visual masterpiece with Life of Pi. I mean it when I say you could watch this movie without any sound or captioning and still be moved. I don’t know how much of it was real or CGI, but it makes you want to go out and just experience Earth’s beauty (maybe not via lifeboat though). There’s even the suggestion in the movie that simply taking the time to appreciate the planet and its natural beauty could save your life. It saved Pi.

In addition to a fascinating story, the acting is also very good. This was Suraj Sharma’s first film and you cannot tell at all. He was completely believable. Irrfan Khan who plays adult Pi doesn’t have a whole lot of screen time, but he gives a solid performance too, particularly near the end. I read that Tobey Maguire was supposed to play the role of the writer interviewing adult Pi, but Ang Lee decided to go with a lesser known actor. It’s a good choice because it would have been hard not to see Tobey on the screen, especially when so much of the cast were unknowns. As for the main star, Richard Parker, I don’t know where the CGI began or ended. That is a major feat.

I guess if I have any problem with the film it was with the scenes set in the present. I liked the act of adult Pi telling his story to a character in the film. It felt like a parent tucking you into bed and offering a bedtime story. It really sucks you in, but sometimes when we would go back into the present and see the two talking, with the writer nudging Pi for more information, it felt like a device to get Pi talking. Perhaps a little more development of the writer’s character would have helped. Or if we spent a little more time with them before launching into Pi’s life. Then the writer would have seemed a little more real, and the consequences to hearing Pi’s story would have mattered more.

But that’s hardly an issue really. I loved this movie. It touched me. Over time I’ve learned that I have a strong affinity for movies about human beings surviving dire circumstances. Alive and 127 Hours are a couple of movies that have touched me to the very core. I’m not sure why these survival tales even mean so much to me. Maybe it’s because I tend to take life for granted too much. I know I don’t appreciate life as much I’d like to. The characters in these movies suffer to save their lives at all costs, and it reminds me just how valuable my life is, how valuable all life is. In a sense the characters suffer so I don’t have to. And to me that’s when fiction becomes magical: when I get to experience another person’s life and then learn and grow from it.

As it goes with the movies I really love, it doesn’t matter to me if another single person ever sees Life of Pi. Like with 127 Hours I feel these movies are talking directly to me. They may as well have been made for only me. I know they weren’t, but to me what’s most important with these films is how they affect me and what I learn from them. Still, I hope you see it. It’s a really good movie, and maybe it’ll affect you too. That would be a wonderful thing. Until next time, happy movie watching!

(See, I didn’t even use the word “great.” But I did say “magical” three times. Oh well, it’s a magical movie. What do you want from me?)

Life of Pi
Director: Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain)
Writer: David Magee (Finding Neverland), Yann Martel (Life of Pi [novel])