REVIEW: Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2012): Dir. Ang Lee. Written by David Magee. Based on the novel by Yann Martel. Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Adil Hussain and Rafe Spall. Rated PG (Animal violence). Running time: 127 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

A lot of people worked very hard on Life of Pi, most of them computer animators, and their impressive level of craftsmanship is on full display in the gorgeous, digital spaces visited in the film. I wish I could say my appreciation of the movie runs deeper than that. Whether because of the film’s infatuation with artificial wonder or some internal limitation within myself, I was always kept at a distance from the story. That’s a shame because the story promises something rather special: belief in God. Unfortunately, there is no money-back guarantee on that promise but I suppose little in the world of faith offers that.

A struggling novelist (Rafe Spall) visits an Indian man named Piscine Patel (Irrfan Khan) in Montreal. He has been told that Piscine has an incredible story, a story that proves God’s existence and may well provide inspiration for the author’s next work. Piscine, a warm and thoughtful man, confirms that this is true and agrees to tell his tale.

He begins by describing his childhood in India where his father (Adil Hussain) owned and ran a zoo. As a boy, Piscine (played by Ayush Tandon in the initial flashbacks and Suraj Sharma as a young adult), or Pi as he nicknames himself after some unfortunate teasing in school, has an unusual relationship with religion. He was raised a Hindu but his father is a man of science who advises his two sons to seek answers to their questions in hard, observable facts. Pi’s mother (Tabu) on the other hand is more open-minded, encouraging Pi to explore his spirituality.

Pi discovers Christianity and is at first perplexed, then fascinated, by the story of Christ. Next he encounters Islam, finding solace in the religion’s prayer rituals. Seeing no reason to choose between the faiths, Pi becomes a follower of all three. Each religion in conjunction with the others, he feels, enriches his relationship with God in a way no single one can.

His faith is tested several years later, when the bulk of the film takes place. The family is selling the zoo and moving to Canada. Setting sail aboard a Japanese cargo ship, they cross the Pacific Ocean with a few dozen exotic animals that will be sold to another zoo upon their arrival in Canada. Roughly halfway through their journey, however, something goes awry and the ship sinks in the midst of a brutal storm. Separated from his family, Pi manages to jump onto a lifeboat where several companions soon join him: an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger named (thanks to a clerical error) Richard Parker.

The days and weeks pass on this apparent ark. Natural selection by way of the tiger’s appetite soon whittles down the boat’s population to two: Pi and Richard Parker.

What follows is as much a survival story as it is a study in animal behavior. Not only must Pi contend with his own hunger and thirst but Richard Parker’s as well. He must train the tiger to see him as its master and not a tasty snack.

Though the majority of the film’s scenes are set on the vast expanse of the Pacific, director Ang Lee breaks up the potential visual monotony with all sorts of vibrant colors and fantastical sights. A reflection on the water’s surface of a golden sunset stretches out to the horizon. Hundreds of luminous fish brighten the dark depths of the ocean at night. And in a dream sequence, the camera plunges into those same black waters and through a series of pseudo-psychedelic images that, in a different context, would make a hell of a screensaver.

But for all its digitized splendor, Life of Pi fails to connect on an emotional level. The visuals only serve to distract from the main action of the plot. What was alive on the page is oddly dull here. This is largely due to the script, a pedestrian adaptation by David Magee, which saps the tension from the story’s midsection and fails to convey the isolation and desperation of a person trapped at sea.

The script also blindly replicates from the book the frame story with the Canadian author. This framing was a sly, self-referential wink in French-Canadian Yann Martel’s novel but feels extraneous and forced here.

And as for affirming the existence of God, Ang Lee’s movie comes up as empty-handed as Mr. Martel’s book. The movie puts some interesting ideas into play – the role religion plays in knowing God, the harsh cruelties of nature – but there is nothing that reaches the story’s unrealistically lofty aims. Life of Pi is beautiful, yes, but far from transcendent. 

- Steve Avigliano, 11/26/12