Life of Pi

Life of Pi sets itself up for a fall early-on.  The movie uses a framing device: a novelist looking for an idea for his next book speaks to Pi, an Indian man living in Canada who claims to have a story that “will make you believe in God.”  That’s a tall order, and one that the movie can’t quite fill.  What it does do is deliver a colorful, impeccably photographed tale that effectively mixes action and adventure with basic philosophy.

As the movie begins, the middle-aged Pi (Irrfan Khan) talks about his whimsical upbringing in India.  The son of a zoo-owner, Pi developed an interest in world religions at an early age, cobbling together aspects of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam into his own spiritual belief system.  His conceptual interests are at odds with his business-minded father, who would prefer he focus on more practical pursuits.  Life of Pi is based on a book by Yann Martel, and the early passages of the movie display the slow-burning attention to detail one expects from a novel.  The characters describe their unhurried existence, director Ang Lee lingers on elements he finds interesting, and the audience is allowed to relax into the story.

When Pi’s father stumbles upon a business opportunity in Canada, the family and their menagerie of animals pile into a freighter and set out across the Pacific Ocean.  They are beset by a storm.  Their ship sinks in a visually spectacular and emotionally stirring sequence, and Pi ends up adrift on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a very hungry, very dangerous Bengal tiger, his family dead and his hope for rescue slim.

A teenager and a tiger, together on a lifeboat, forced to not kill each other long enough to find dry land: it’s a set-up for a tense adventure story, and the movie makes the most of it.  The tiger, who thanks to a paperwork mix-up is amusingly named Richard Parker, is not treated as a pet or a person with fur; it’s a wild animal more interested in eating Pi than befriending him, and the story’s refusal to sentimentalize him keeps things exciting.  Still, the most thrilling thing about the sea-bound sections of the movie is the photography.  As remembered by the poetically-inclined Pi, the voyage across the Pacific is presented in deep, piercing colors of ethereal beauty.  There are scenes set at night, the waters stuffed with translucent Jellyfish or massive whales, that are eerily wonderful to behold.  The visuals become wilder and weirder as the movie goes on, until at last everything is opaque symbolism, painted with tender detail by the visual effects team.

The narrative, too, eventually leaves behind the adventure thread and wafts into symbolic allegory, this time to less impressive effect.  The slow, rhythmic presentation of the visuals creates a distinct mood, strange and haunting, but by the time the movie starts to try and live up to its boast about making the audience believe in God I felt it had overreached.  It doesn’t really matter.  The movie will enthrall children because it has a tiger.  The visuals will entertain their parents, and although the promised philosophical denouncement never quite comes, the mood lingers after it’s over.