Life Of Pi: A Review

Based on Yann Martel's book of the same name, Life Of Pi was almost trapped forever in development hell, with many directors signed on and signed off on it. But no, it was released gloriously into theatres around the world last year (the start of this year in Australia) and has been hailed as one of the best films of 2012, and has been nominated for Best Picture at the 85th Academy Awards.

Like the book, the story focuses on Piscine Molitor Patel's ("Pi") entrapment in the middle of the pacific in a lifeboat (after the freighter transporting his family and his family's zoo sank), if that's not bad enough, there is a hungry Bengal Tiger sharing the boat.

Ang Lee seemed to have emphasise the book's religious overtones. In the book and the film, Pi is shown as a person of multi faith, holding down three religions at once with his father being opposed to them all.  Lee also added scenes of Adult Pi telling the story of his entrapment to a young writer (a minor character in the book), who becomes the audience's avatar.  The writer, being led to believe that Pi has a story that would "make him believe in God" abandoned his Novel in favour of Pi's story (not a very religious man then). Their whole conversations consists mainly of discussing Pi's story and faith.

The Film kept the book's resolution to Pi's entrapment (SPOILER ALERT!) In both medium, Pi survived and is visited by Investigators who are investigating the sinking of the Freighter. They rejected his story of surviving almost a year, floating in the middle of the pacific in a lifeboat with a Tiger, since they all found it hard to believe. Like the book, Pi tells them another story, a darker, bleaker, but far more realistic story, exchanging the animals for people. This second story has no wonder in it, only blood, though it ends in the same way, despite casting Pi in a different light. At the end of both stories, Pi ask the people he's been telling the story to, which stories they prefer.

If we take into account the theme of Faith that has been floating alongside the main story for the course of the 150 minutes runtime, Pi's two stories pretty much sums up the point that you couldn't force someone to believe in something (in this case Faith), they need to choose for themselves if they want to truly believe. The stories also, in a way paint pictures of a world with God, where miracles could happen and a Godless World, where there is no wonder to be found. Pretty strong stuff for a family film.

The 3D of the Film is one of the best I've experienced in recent times and the CGI Tiger is really, really good, you could almost think they trained a real Tiger to act. Mychael Danna's score to the film is also really good, very subtle instead of symphonically melodramatic. David Magee's script is also very well done, especially the writing in of the scenes with adult Pi and The Writer.

Suraj Sharma performance as  Pi  is in the same level as Tom Hanks  in 2001's Cast Away. I found the rest of the cast, despite giving good performances to be merely functional. But then again, they aren't being given as much screen-time as Suraj.

4.5/5