Jungle Book + Avatar + Titanic + something classy = Life of Pi. My take on this film directed by Ang Lee.
Ang Lee is a very talented filmmaker. He can make what would normally be boring dialogue interesting enough to keep you attentive until he introduces the grand imagery. And once that happens, you will be in awe.
Life of Pi is about a young Indian boy (the kind from India), who is so innocent, naive, and inquisitive about nature that he taunts the wrath of “god”. His father is a zookeeper and a very rational man. He tells Pi not to believe too much in their native religion of Hinduism because when he was sick as a boy, the religion did nothing to cure him, but that of Western medicine. So Pi naturally starts questioning his beliefs and takes up all sorts of religions. By chance, he learns about Christianity and Jesus, the son of God. He starts to question why a god that loves his people so much would harm and torture them so.
On a whim, Pi and his brother sneak into the zoo and try to lure a giant adult Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker (it’s a long story) with a piece of meat. Pi’s brother takes off running and returns with his father who is furious. Pi’s father decides to teach him a lesson and brings in a goat and forces Pi to watch the true nature of tigers. Sure enough, the tiger mauls the goat and eats it, as the young boys watch in horror.
Eventually, a civil war is about to break loose in India and Pi’s father plans to move the family to North America. He plans on selling the zoo, however, the animals they can keep. They will ride a Japanese ship across the ocean (I’m not sure whether it was the Atlantic or Pacific). If it was a Japanese ship, then I’m assuming it’s the Pacific.
Anyway, on the ship, Pi is restless and thunder storms awaken him when he is sleeping. He sneaks out to the deck and taunts God to give him more rain. So, sure enough, if there isn’t any conflict the film wouldn’t exist, God pounds the ship with a huge wave and flips the ship over, killing everyone on board except for Pi and a select few animals.
This is quite possibly the money maker of this film. Now that movies have gotten so high resolution, the viewing experience can be quite immersive. The tempest and ocean and waves aren’t quite life size, but mixed with frightening sound effects of wind, screeching metal, and cracking waves, then you feel like you’re right in there, getting tossed around by “God” himself. The most amazing shot to give you a sense of scale is when Pi dives deep after a huge wave smashes down on his life boat and looks up at the ship at the surface of the ocean. If you are claustrophobic, this might not be such a comfortable scene to watch.
After the storm settles, Pi finds himself on the sole lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan who was drifting out at sea on a raft of bananas (they really do float! according to Pi). The hyena proves to be a real immediate danger and kills the zebra as Pi watches in horror and at a distance. Later, when the hyena turns hungry again, it tries to kill the orangutan, but the orangutan seems to knock him out. But the hyena ultimately gets the best of the ape. And this is when we are introduced to another stowaway, a huge adult Bengal tiger Richard Parker lunges out from behind the canvas and kills the hyena. Now it’s just Pi and the tiger on a life boat.
And what remains is a series of scenes, almost suspenseful and real, of Pi trying to outsmart Richard Parker. It isn’t quite a Disney movie (at least 10% of it is and predictable), and there is a real sense that this tiger will kill Pi for food. It’d be a full Disney movie if these animals could talk and it wouldn’t be surprising because the computer generated imagery is really impressive. And just to point out, yes, all these zoo animals are computer generated. There is some really subtle and nuanced behavior animated into these creatures. Otherwise, I’d assume it would be hard to train live animals well enough to give these performances and have such believable interactions with humans.
Anyway, after drifting out in the ocean long enough, Pi realizes that Richard Parker will eventually get hungry and eat him. Pi learns how to fish and ration the stowaway food. Pi has built a separate floating raft out of life jackets so that he can sleep away from the tiger. He stores all his food on the raft, too. Eventually, a giant whale flips it all over and he loses everything. He realizes then that he must get along with Richard Parker or die. So he learns to fish and manages to train the tiger. Eventually, they both are at their breaking points. And this is when the deus ex machina kicks in. They wash up onto a tiny floating island full of meerkats.
Pi eats up on seaweed and roots while Richard Parker dines on meerkats. Things seem to be content until Pi watches the meerkats scatter as the night comes. It turns out, the tiny island tranforms into “death”, and as the context of this scene insinuates, the island gives you life in the day, but takes it all exponentially away at night. Pi finds a human tooth encased inside of a flower. The island is like a giant Venus fly trap. So Pi realized if he stayed there, he would eventually get eaten by the island. He packs up some roots and meerkats for the tiger and takes his chances out at sea again.
Finally, they wash up on the shores of Mexico. And Richard Parker runs off into the jungle and Pi is rescued by humans.
It is an existential trip for Pi, who having lost his entire family, claims to have been saved by his interactions with a tiger on a lifeboat. If this movie was trying to drive home any religious undertones, maybe it is that having faith in any one religion isn’t enough. Pi’s religions did not save him from savage nature, symbolized by Richard Parker. It was his father’s training as a reasonable man that kept him alive. But at the same time, having witnessed how evil and good God, represented by the unpredictableness of nature and the floating island, it restores some of Pi’s faith and hope in religion.
So it’s possible the ultimate mission statement of this film is that people survive because they know how to adapt. And it’s harder to survive if no one teaches you how brutal nature (human or not) can be. And the final step of surviving is to move on.
I highly recommend this film.