Crouching Tiger, Hidden Allegory

Life of Pi

***½  out of ****

Directed by: Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Tabu and Adil Hussain

Running time: 127 minutes

Life of Pi, adapted to the screen by David Magee (Finding Neverland) and realized by master filmmaker Ang Lee, is the third film from the past month to come from a bestselling novel deemed unfilmable, after Cloud Atlas and Midnight’s Children.

But, despite a tempestuous journey to the big screen, the adaptation is stunning, filled with the arguments of belief and doubt that the novel explored dutifully while adding some dazzling visual effects to the veneer.

The odyssey of a young Indian man and a carnivorous Bengal tiger marooned to a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean can only work if digital technology can create the illusion of a man-eating creature. Simply put, the Bengali tiger, named Richard Parker, is the most breathtaking visual effect I have ever seen in any film.

Although created entirely by digital artists, not once did I deny the creature as photographically present. Richard Parker isn’t just a frightening character due to its ferocity, but for how its appearance, movement and voice are miraculously photo-realistic.

Based on Yann Martel’s life-affirming bestseller, Life of Pi is a faithful adaptation, as well as a faith-full one. The protagonist, Pi, is a young boy growing up in Pondicherry, a town in India’s southeastern curve, and his coming-of-age is shown through three actors of different ages

Pi’s father (Adil Hussain) owns a zoo on some botanical gardens in the town. When the young boy and his brother tempt Richard Parker with meat, his father scolds them by making the two watch the tiger engulf a goat. The scene, like many of the situations on the boat, is less graphic than their depictions in Martel’s novel – likely done to fit the boundaries of a PG rating.

Growing up in a town with many religiously divided quarters, the naturally curious boy embraces many beliefs, becoming an astute follower of Christianity and Islam while being raised as Hindu. Pi’s father, a follower of the New India, is more secular and feels that his son is wasting his energy through spiritualism. It doesn’t matter to the young boy – when he hides under his covers at night to read comic books, the figures in them are religious. The Gods are his superheroes.

However, the rest of the film is a test of faith for the boy. When his family sails to Canada, the freighter capsizes. Marooned to the lifeboat, Pi has little time to grapple with his family’s death. Instead, he must learn how to share his territory with the ferocious Richard Parker.

Martel’s narrative was thrust forward with the protagonist’s courageous will to survive, and director Ang Lee sustains the pace wonderfully – vital for a film that spend about two thirds of its running time in the middle of the ocean. Newcomer Suraj Sharma is commanding as Pi, his performance even more impressive when one realizes that he’s reacting against CGI creatures. 

Sharma boasts an emotional range needed for such a demanding journey – Pi loses his family in an instant and then must fend for himself under the tiger’s glowering watch. As Richard Parker and Pi’s struggle intensifies to suffering and starvation, both the boy and his tiger begin to mirror each other.

Much of this middle section is dialogue-free, and director Ang Lee uses a magnificent visual palette to make up for the lack of words. The achingly majestic beauty of the scenescapes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon return here, although the same sense of alertness and danger that flowed through his earlier masterwork is also present.

Arguably the must sumptuous-looking film of the year, Life of PI is photographed by Claudio Miranda (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Miranda captures both the solitude and the peril of the seas with various ocean-blue and stringent yellow hues. In the film’s wondrous opening credits sequence, the camera nimbly adapts to the habitat of the various zoo animals it follows.

However, the Kipling-esque story, one imbued with magic realism and metaphor, is not just a dazzling spectacle. Lee meditates on the connections between religion and reason that prompted thought-provoking discussion when the bestseller was released.

Life of Pi meets its only bumps when it concludes. The film returns to Montreal, where the middle-aged Pi (Irrfan Khan) is retelling his odyssey to a writer friend (Rafe Spall). The scenes with the older Pi, only marginally in Martel’s novel, could have been cut without neglecting the film’s power or its exploration of religious belief.

As the older Pi promises at the beginning of the film, his story is one that “would make you believe in God.” Both a stunning visual spectacle and a resonant meditation on the resilience of faith in the midst of extraordinary circumstances, Life of Pi doesn’t quite make me a believer to the extent that Martel’s novel did, although it is still a film worth preaching about.