What audiences were waiting for: the cross between Cast Away, Contact, and Titanic. Life of Pi is a tremendous motion picture. It is equal parts entertaining, smart, and ambitious. Director Ang Lee can proudly place this next to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the top of his personal list. Life of Pi even contains a crouching tiger (the hidden dragon remains hidden).
Like the book, the story begins with a writer (Rafe Spall) interviewing the older Pi (Irfan Khan) after hearing that Pi has a story that will make the writer believe in God. Then Pi goes into his story about his pan-religious upbringing and family zoo. When teenage Pi (Suraj Sharma) is forced to move from India to Canada, his ship sinks, and he is left on a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, a mother orangutan who lost their child, and Richard Parker, a Bengal Tiger. Laws of the animal kingdom quickly dictate that the number will dwindle to two. The older Pi then recants the tale of how he managed to survive his ordeal at sea AND tame a wild tiger within the context of a claustrophobic lifeboat and floating raft.
Using a surrogate to react to the story create the weaker elements in Life of Pi. Not all of the segments are bad; some serve as good interruptions to the main story to have us ponder what we just saw, and the intro does a relatively succinct job establishing Pi’s character, his motivations, Richard Parker, and the ship. The ending is the most flat, mostly because it tacks on what is probably an unnecessary ending involving Japanese boat insurers. The main story had a nice ending built-in with a great denouement with the older Pi, but keeps going about 15 minutes too long. With the ending as is Life of Pi is good, but without the last 15 minutes, Life of Pi could have been transcendent.
That is because of two things: the complicated relationship between Pi and Richard Parker and the use of CGI. Life of Pi has several questions in its arsenal, among them: Do animals have souls? Life of Pi contexualizes these philosophical contemplations through the Pi/Parker relationship. What makes Life of Pi special is that the answers to these questions are not black and white (except a hyena). At first, Richard Parker just tries to eat Pi since that is the animal’s nature; over the course of time, because of mutual need, the tiger softens his actions to Pi, but only a certain extent. Richard Parkers’s eyes might tell Pi that he feels what Pi feels, but how much of this is a mask for an animal in a more dependent position? This uneasy truce is tested with each new scenario, up until the end of the story, since we only know what happened to Pi and not Richard Parker.
The most polarizing piece of Ang Lee’s direction is infusing religion into the story. This movie is going to offput several groups: atheists will resent the perceived naiveté of Pi, the various religious factions will be angry at the naiveté of Pi’s absorption of ideas from all of the cultures. However, the introduction does a really good job justifying why Pi accepts aspects of several religions and justifies his adherence to both faith and facts (Pi does some very clever rafting and well as use his animal skills from the zoo). In fact, the audience could subscribe to the belief that without faith in Richard Parker and God that Pi would never have survived the predicament he found himself in. This adds a layer of complexity to Life of Pi that gives the audience plenty to talk about leaving the theatre.
One thing you will leave Life of Pi a believer in: Ang Lee’s use of special effects. There are some brilliantly realized images: the shipwreck (still 2nd to Titanic’s), fly fishing (literally), and the trailer scene involving a whale. However, Lee’s finest accomplishment is Richard Parker himself. Not once did I feel like I was watching a fake tiger; the reactions, movements, and growl all felt 100% realized. Much like James Cameron’s Avatar, I couldn’t believe what I was watching was CGI’ed (credit goes to Suraj Sharma in his first role acting against a nonexistent animal).
2012 for me will be the year they filmed unfilmable movies. The Avengers put several superheroes in a movie together. Cloud Atlas weaved several stories in different time periods using the same actors together, and Life of Pi films a shipwreck, and a bengal tiger and boy on a boat. While the Avengers and Cloud Atlas are fun, Life of Pi asks more personal questions that involve rites of passage for everyone, elevating it over the other two. Life of Pi should be seen by atheists and believers alike, and leave everyone amazed at the triumph of the human spirit.