Ang Lee has already demonstrated his vast versatility as a director ranging from Jane Austen adaptations (Sense and Sensibility), to culturally charged rom coms (The Wedding Banquet), to old school wuxia films (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), to tragic love dramas (Brokeback Mountain). Now a la Martin Scorcese, Lee makes his foray into the canvas that is 3-D in his treatment of the acclaimed novel, Life of Pi.
Pi follows the narrative of the titular character Piscene “Pi” Patel, a curiously spiritual Indian boy, who suffers a tragic shipwreck, leaving his family dead and himself stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker.
The film is told through the perspective of an adult Pi (Irrfan Khan, Slumdog Millionaire, The Amazing Spiderman), retelling his story to a Canadian writer (Rage Spall, Hot Fuzz, Prometheus). This form of narrative merely serves as a plot device and plays out in a rather predictable fashion. The true artistry occurs during Pi’s 227 day aquatic odyssey with Richard Parker.
If you’ve read the book you know what you’re getting into. The bulk of the movie is Pi on learning to live on the raft with Richard Parker, and similarly to WALL-E, Life of Pi relies heavily on visuals and minimal dialogue. This definitely helps the movie feel the full 2 hours it is, but it sure pulls it off.
Lee has defined himself as one of the most poetic directors of our generation, able to realize intensely human emotions in a multitude of landscapes. Filmed in 3-D, the film takes what Lee already does with a cinematography and embellishes upon his craft on the x, y, and z axis. Lee contrasts a glass-like ocean of vast majesty with a treacherous and claustrophobic lifeboat, illustrating the delicate line between the beautiful and terrifying.
What really sells the film is the complement between the animated Richard Parker and newcomer Suraj Sharma as the adolescent Pi. The sophistication of the tiger’s rendering and Sharma’s commitment to character add up to a believability that places us right in the boat with the two of them. We begin to feel the hope drain from our bodies, and our sanity begin to wane, only to realize that the 500lb bengal tiger is not only our greatest fear, but our greatest anchor to survival.
Pi grapples with spirituality, forcing us to face the enormity of the cosmic energies in the universe, humbling us and realizing our own minuteness. To reconcile with the vast sphere of our existence, narration provides us with a tool to define our lives. Pi demonstrates our subjectivity of a narrative frames how we derive philosophical meaning from events and ultimately how to face each day in the life of Pi.
Pulp Diction 