Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Ang Lee
Quick Impressions:
I haven’t read Yann Martel’s Booker prize winning novel (yet), but I have read Herodotus, and I must say Life of Pi reminds me of the Greek story of Arion and the Dolphin. As we left the theater Wednesday evening, that was the first association that popped into my mind, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Wednesday night as I prepared for Thanksgiving by making pie—two apple, one pecan—I kept thinking about what Pi made of his life, his compelling approach to theology and narrative. Because I try to keep my reviews spoiler free, I can’t share some of the insights—and questions—I find most compelling, but I can say without reservation that as Oscar baity movies go, Life of Pi is very solid. (Sadly, the same cannot be said of my pecan pie which came out of the oven firm enough but mysteriously liquefied by the time we were ready for dessert.)
The Good:
Before I saw this movie, I knew four things about it: 1) Its preview, featuring a surreal scene of animals drowning and a tiger staring down a young Indian man on a lifeboat,
played before seemingly every theatrical release of 2012, 2) It was based on a book, 3) It was generating Oscar buzz, 4) M. Night Shyamalan did not direct it.
Actually, I learned tidbit #4 first. What seems like ages ago, I remember several entertainment news headlines reassuring me that M. Night Shyamalan was no longer attached to direct Life of Pi.
Great news, I thought. I love it when M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t direct things.
As the end credits rolled, I remember thinking to myself, It’s good that M. Night Shyamalan didn’t direct this. He would have made it all about the ending instead of focusing on the journey.
Then I thought, Quit beating up on M. Night Shyamalan, you pretentious nobody. You liked The Village, and you saw The Happening. In reality, of course, I have no idea what Shyamalan would have done, but I do know what audiences hearing his name would have expected, and if you go into the movie thinking, So what’s the twist ending? What’s the twist? that kind of ruins it.
A movie helmed by Ang Lee on the other hand could turn out to be anything. Sense and Sensibility, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain—his most famous films that don’t have a comma in the title necessitating the awkward use of semi-colons in my pretty little list—are all similar in many ways, but not in ways so obvious that the audience approaches the movie like a game they know all the rules to already. Lee does seem to like a tortured romance, and the scenes with Pi and Richard Parker do play out rather like a love story. The bond between Richard Parker and Pi is at the very heart of the story, and Lee does a commendable job of focusing on that and making us care about the boy and the tiger. For the movie to work, we must care, we must engage in the story of their journey together. And, though at the end we realize that the relationship is more complex than we at first believed, because the movie has worked, we understand that the story is not something other than what we thought it was, but rather, something bigger than what we imagined.
And the story is very engaging, so engaging that even my three-year-old watched it intently (though not quietly. She had a lot of questions). Most of the movie is just a teen and a tiger stuck on a life boat in the middle of the ocean, but honestly, that’s the best part of the movie.
Visually, Life of Pi is stunning from start to finish. Much of its beauty seems surreal, but to its credit, you really can’t tell that the tiger is computer-generated. The CGI tiger looks ten thousand times more real than any creature in the Star Wars prequels and has as much charisma as any of his human co-stars (considerably more, in fact, than Rafe Spall). But there’s no way they starved an actual tiger (even though, I believe several tigers were used in the film), so it must just be impressive CGI (or really impressive make-up on two guys in a tiger costume).
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (David Magee):
Speaking of actors crawling around on all fours disguised as animals, the screenplay was written by David Magee, who also wrote Finding Neverland (a favorite of mine from 2004 about the making of Peter Pan which features a human playing a dog).
As I said, I haven’t read the book, but I think Magee has a definite shot at a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay (though it’s bound to be a very competitive category this year). You hear the premise and think, So it’s a guy and a tiger on a boat for two hours. How interesting could that be?
What makes a great novel doesn’t always make such a hot movie, but I like how we get lots of narration at the beginning, but less as the main action of the story Pi has been prepping his audience for actually begins to unfold on screen. I think the movie does a good job of deciding which part of the novel is actually the story and then setting up and showcasing that story in an effective way. I haven’t read the screenplay, but I’m assuming the screenwriter should get partial credit for that.
I think the screenplay is best when Pi narrates the end of his journey with Richard Parker and describes his reaction to the final behavior of the tiger. We are shown what we need to see and told what we need to hear.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Ang Lee):
I’ve said already that I think Lee handles the scenes on the life boat expertly (or if I haven’t, I’m saying it now). Even though Best Director is always an extremely competitive category, Lee’s name at least belongs in the discussion for his work here.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the discussion around the Patel’s dinner table before they leave on their voyage. Their family dynamic comes across so clearly in just a few minutes. All of the actors do a marvelous job, and the scene sticks with us (or at least it stuck with me). I think it’s important to see where Pi comes from before we try to make sense of where he’s going.
Other likely Oscars:
Now that I’ve seen this movie, I can’t imagine how it could fail to receive a nomination for cinematography. It might also be nominated for Original Score since several moments the visuals seemed to showcase the music and vice versa.
The Performances:
I don’t expect any Oscar nominations for acting here, even though the cast delivers perfectly good performances.
Suraj Sharma brings the young Pi to life very capably. As played by Sharma, Pi displays both earnestness and a winning sense of humor, and those are tricky qualities to balance. This is Suraj’s first movie role, and I think casting an unknown was a wise decision because Pi’s the type of character best appreciated without the baggage an established star would bring to the role. The problem is that he’s constantly being shown up by the cinematography and the apparently-real-but-likely-quite-often-CGI tiger. He gives a good performance, but I completely expect it to be overlooked, in part because it seems effortless. (Of course, bad performances don’t seem effortless, but that’s a well-known fact that Oscar voters like to pretend they’re not aware of.)
I particularly liked Pi’s parents, played by Adil Hussain and Tabu. The two have a natural chemistry and interact together like they’ve been doing it all their lives (interacting, I mean). All of the scenes of the family together feel very real. We barely get to see this family in action, but what we’re shown is so vivid and engaging that we feel a great sense of loss along with Pi when the shipwreck separates him from his parents and his brother. If her part were slightly larger, I’d say Tabu had a shot at a Supporting Actress nomination, but I just don’t think she has enough screentime.
I’ve read that the role of the writer was recast several times to avoid using a big name star whose fame would distract the audience. Casting Rafe Spall was inspired because he definitely does not distract the audience. In fact, you barely even notice he’s there. On the whole, I’d say he probably should have been a bit more distracting. (Of course, he did distract me because I kept thinking, Wow, that’s Timothy Spall’s son? He’s surprisingly handsome.)
Gérard Depardieu has one very brief scene, but I’d guess that he was cast for the opposite reason. I think he’s actually in the movie so that the cook leaves a lasting impression. I mean, the guy is barely in the movie, but when we’re asked to call him to mind again later, it’s very easy because he’s Gérard Depardieu.
I usually like the charismatic Irrfan Khan, and he’s very good here as the older Pi. Khan’s got a lot of energy, so he’s a scene stealer even when he’s not doing anything but sitting still and calmly talking. (Of course, stealing scenes from Rafe Spall is not exactly difficult.)
Shravanthi Sainath is lovely as Pi’s girlfriend Anandi, a character in the film all too briefly.
Best Scene Visually:
It’s impossible to single-out just one scene. Both day time and night time on the island are gorgeous and odd. Also good is Pi’s dream sequence as he and Richard Parker stare out into the vast, starry sky and endless sea.
Probably my favorite scene is the one with the flying fish because of the phosphorescent shimmer they leave in their wake, though I equally loved the opening scene at the zoo. Nothing too flashy happens, but nothing has to. Things are so beautiful as they are.
When I asked her, my three-year-old decided that her favorite part was “the island where those meerkats are running.”
Best Scene:
To me, the key scene in the movie is the one where a very young Pi stares into the eyes of Richard Parker for the first time. What happens afterward clearly does make an impression, though perhaps not the impression Pi’s father intends to impart.
My sister was worried that my three-year-old would freak out at the end of that scene, little realizing that my daughter—whose favorite movie is The Lion King—watches many nature documentaries about big cats.
After the whole goat ordeal was over, my daughter grinned and said, “I like the tiger.” Apparently Pi liked him, too.
Best Action Sequence:
It’s pretty hard to beat the shipwreck and its aftermath. The moment when Pi realizes that Richard Parker is on the boat is pretty memorable.
Funniest Scene:
When Pi tried to mark his territory in an animalistic way, the tiger’s response made several people in the theater laugh. Even my three-year-old found it laugh-out-loud hilarious. In fact, the tiger is always highly entertaining because it behaves like a tiger, and as the internet has taught us all, cats are very, very funny.
The Negatives:
The movie’s only major failing is that it promises way more than it can possibly deliver. The preview prepares you for a visually stunning adventure movie about a boy and a tiger. Then the movie starts, and you’re told over and over again (emphatically) that Pi’s story will “make you believe in God.”
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie, but it doesn’t make you believe in God. We don’t even see any clear evidence that Pi’s story makes the Rafe Spall character believe in God. In fact, living the experience doesn’t even make Pi believe in God because he believed in God already. All that we really learn by listening to Mamaji’s claims and Pi’s story is that perhaps it is from his godfather that Pi inherited his propensity for grandiose exaggeration.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the movie doesn’t have something substantial to say about faith, the nature of belief, even the role of narrative in the creation of meaning. (Theologians, mystics, philosophers, literary theorists, hipsters on the lookout for a new text to bring to their next epistemology discussion group—people who have faith or want to have faith or want to know why other people have faith should enjoy this film. So will three-year-olds who like big cats.) But in order for the story to say anything to you on a spiritual level, you must already be aware that you have one.
You watch the last scenes of the movie and think, “Hmm. That wasn’t what I expected. How interesting! I’ll to think about that.”
You don’t gasp and scream, “My mind was just blown! What happened? How could I have been so blind? Do tigers even exist? Is anything real???????!!!! There is no spoon! All this light is blinding me!!! At last I can see that the only answer is God!” and then fall down weeping on the floor among the rejected pieces of popcorn.
(For the record, I don’t expect the movie (or any movie) to trigger such a reaction. I’m just not sure why we get such a heavy-handed set-up for a conclusion that does not in the slightest convince anybody of anything let alone that God exists.)
I probably need to read the book to answer some of my remaining questions.
For instance, I understand why it matters (a lot) that Piscine Molitor Patel got tired of being teased and renamed himself Pi in a dramatic and memorable fashion. But I’m really not sure why his father decided to give him the name in the first place. (I didn’t miss the explanation. I’m just wondering if we get more information about the godfather character in the book.) I can see the significance of the name (and the story of the name) myself, but I wish I knew if I should be seeing more than I do.
The ending took me and my husband completely by surprise, but I thought the movie concluded better than the first story. Perhaps this means I prefer Option #3: All of the Above. I am a writer, after all. Perhaps for me, truth lies in the creation of narrative.
In all honesty, I liked the movie far more than I expected to, and the nitpicky faults I did find with it—or significant questions that I had—can’t really be discussed without spoilers. The beginning seems a little slow, but I think that’s just because on a first viewing, I didn’t know what to expect from the story to come.
I will say that of all the sequences, the part about the island was the least defined and explained (from a narrative standpoint). That’s definitely the strangest part of the film, and it’s also the part that generated the most lively discussion after the movie. (Almost none of us interpreted the sequence in the same way.) My sister’s boyfriend is an artist and noticed visual details about the island that the rest of us missed.
I am also quite sure that if I knew more about Hinduism and Islam, I probably would have caught references to them that I missed since I noticed some nods to Christianity.
Overall:
My three-year-old enjoyed Life of Pi and watched the entire thing, asking questions a little too often (and a little too loudly), perhaps, but engaged nonetheless. I went with a large group of people of all ages, and we all liked it. In fact, I liked it far more than I thought I would. The movie is consistently engaging and visually amazing. While it’s on, it presents plenty of spectacle to hold your attention, and then at the end, the movie also gives you a philosophical treat to take home for later.