Review: LIFE OF PI (2012)

[Mark Leeper]

LIFE OF PI
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: LIFE OF PI joins JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
(1973) and THE LITTLE PRINCE (1974) as being an
adaptation of a philosophical book that reached for
big meanings, and it is not a lot more profound. Ang
Lee's film of Yann Martel's novel LIFE OF PI is a
visual feast, well acted and with very fine use of 3D,
but the story itself does not reach profundity and
instead seems flat and a little pretentious. Lee has
done as much or more with this story than can possibly
be expected, but like WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (1998) I
personally would prefer to watch it with the sound off.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

[Disclaimer: I will say at the outset of this review that I think
of myself as an empiricist. I personally am skeptical of mysticism
of all stripes. But when a film starts out by saying that it has a
story that will make you believe in God, they have my attention.
Philosophers have attempted this feat for centuries. Then the film
proceeds then to tell a fictional story. I generally do not find
fiction modifies my opinions on metaphysics.]

I am a fan of the first half of Carroll Ballard's THE BLACK
STALLION (1979). In that first half a shipwreck maroons a young
boy on a small island with a beautiful Arabian stallion. With
poetic photography and not a word of dialog, it shows how the boy
wins over the initially cautious stallion and how the two become
close friends. In the second half the boy is rescued and allow the
horse to be used as a racehorse, which makes for a disappointing
ending. That was the sort of film I was expecting with LIFE OF PI.
I was aware that the novel, a favorite of afternoon book discussion
groups, had a long section of a similarly shipwrecked young man,
Pi, sharing a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger without becoming the
tiger's emergency food ration. In fact, that turns out to be most
of the story. Though there is more build up, that is the story.
The tiger and Pi (the latter played as a young man by Suraj Sharma)
survive the sinking of the ship taking them from India to Canada
and the two survivors find ways to co-exist. One nice touch is
there never is a point that Pi can be sure he has made a friend of
the tiger. To the author's credit the film never becomes a buddy
movie. Unfortunately, Lee tries to reach for deep meanings, which
may be as bad. The experience adds to seventeen-year-old Pi's
philosophical bent that has already made him simultaneously a
Hindu, a Christian, and a Moslem, so adding a new system of beliefs
to the pile is not much of a stretch for Pi.

Along Pi's way to rescue we see the Pacific Ocean and the sky
overhead photographed by Claudio Miranda with a beauty rarely
matched in films. But Ang Lee is not one to let natural realism
get in the way of an image he wants for the film. Some of this is
real ocean well-filmed, but Lee is not shy about using computer
graphics wherever it will help to create the feeling he wants,
realistic or not. He can give an animal a very human expression
because that animal exists only in a computer. The expression is
more eloquent for the audience can be but not very realistic since
what we really are seeing is a convincing-looking cartoon. Using
CGI we get to see a whale, flying fish, and what I am told is an
entirely digital tiger. We also get a carnivorous island (?)
inhabited by Meer cats and shaped like a woman. One wonders what
is the symbolic meaning of a killer island shaped like a woman.

In addition Lee frequently uses impossible or at least unexplained
lighting. The sea seems to glow with beautiful phosphorescence
that nature knows nothing about. Lee also uses 3D to reasonably
nice effect, though the most impressive use is in the opening
titles in which a lizard run up to the front of the screen. Ang
Lee is a director who seems unafraid to direct any style of film as
long as he has done nothing like it in the past.

To show Pi at different ages four different actors play him, though
they do not really resemble each other. As an adult, Pi is played
by now-familiar Indian actor Irrfan Khan. We have seen him in
major Western films like THE NAMESAKE, A MIGHTY HEART, SLUMDOG
MILLIONAIRE, and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Khan has very
characteristic eyes that none of the other actors playing Pi seem
to share.

Some viewers will certainly see this as an insightful parable and
have a very different experience from mine. Still, if LIFE OF PI
is not the soul-stirring inspiration of faith that the script calls
for it to be, it is more than two hours of natural and unnatural
wonders. If the movie is not tucked into my soul, at least it is
well-lodged into my memory. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale
or 6/10.

Film Credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/life-of-pi/>


Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2012 Mark R. Leeper