My Review of "The Life of Pi"

My review of the Ang Lee’s film adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel the Life of Pi. Let's start with the most important thing, this is an incredible movie, 4 stars so go see it. So now that I have that out of the way… The publisher summarizes the book (which the movie adapts well enough):

The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.

The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?

This movie is foremost a religious parable but is not in any way ideological. The spiritual questions asked fit nicely into nearly every religion including atheism. That fact alone is a literary and film making miracle, and make no mistake this is on purpose. Nothing you see is accidental or trivial. The character names, the types of animals, the relationships are all important subtexts to the overarching theme. That theme can be summed up in the question that PI asks in the end “which story to you like better?”

This theme is not unlike that of the “Big Fish” by Daniel Wallace and its film adaptation. The most obvious difference is that in Big Fish the tragedy is softened with comic relief and in Life of Pi it is softened with spirituality both used ethereal imagery but Life of Pi takes it to another level. This film is truly beautiful. There are elements similar to movies such as Cast Away and Forrest Gump and the aforementioned Big Fish. There is a lot of loss and pain in this movie but the throughout there is hope.

I am a crier by nature and I teared up several times while watching the it, but I found myself really fighting back the tears after it was over and I had a moment to reflect on what I had seen and the questions it asked.

I apologize if this review is not particularly critical, but sometimes a story speaks to you, this is one of those times.



Also: Read the book