OVP: Life of Pi (2012)

Film: Life of Pi (2012)
Stars: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Ayush Tandon, Gautam Belur, Adil Hussain, Tabu, Rafe Spall, Gerard Depardieu
Director: Ang Lee
Oscar History: 11 nominations/4 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Cinematography*, Editing, Score*, Song-"Pi's Lullaby," Art Direction, Visual Effects*, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Ang Lee is one of the most adventurous directors currently working in the medium.  You would be hard-pressed to find a director who, in the last fifteen years, has brought us an epic Chinese action movie, a thought-provoking superhero film, a beautifully-etched gay western love story, a tale of forbidden love and desire, and a powerful coming-of-age film set in the 1960's (and again, a bit of a gay love story).  This from a man who once adopted a Jane Austen novel splendidly to the big screen.  He has no fear about tackling literally any genre, and as a result, he's the only director that I trust to take on any project, even one as difficult and complicated as Yann Martel's seemingly unfilmable tale, Life of Pi.

(Spoilers throughout) For those, who, like me, had never read the book, the film is a tale of grand adventure aboard a raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean.  The film tells the remarkable tale of a boy lost at sea.  The story is told through a narrator, an older Pi (Khan) who wants to tell a writer a story that will make him believe in God.  The older Pi's tale first starts with some beautiful scenes about a young boy embracing religion-Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism-you get to see a rare and open look at the benefits of religion (and not just the shove-it-down-your-throat approach that you get from the 700 Club), in the sort of scene you don't normally get from a mainstream movie.  From there, you are also introduced to the zoo that Pi's father runs, and you get a quick run-in with Richard Parker, the tiger with whom Pi will become better acquainted later in the film.

The film then shows the characters aboard a boat, as the family must move to Canada as they are no longer able to stay in India.  While onboard the ship, the characters encounter a storm, and we are treated to a harrowing scene of the ship going down, complete with animals trying to escape alongside the people.  Pi, and seemingly no other human, is able to survive by boarding a life raft, which also hosts at first only a zebra with a broken leg, but we soon learn also has a hyena, and a rescued orangutan, and finally we find Richard Parker himself.  Slowly but steadily, the hyena kills and eats the zebra, then attacks and kills the orangutan, and finally, in a scene that will give you a mild heart attack from surprise, the tiger jumps out of nowhere and kills the hyena.

Here's where reality has to be suspended and replaced by faith in the film's story, as it's hard to believe that a young man could survive months on end on a finite space the size of most people's kitchens with a gigantic, hungry tiger.  And yet, you do believe it, as Lee spends the right amount of time putting obstacles in Pi's way to keep you entertained without risking you saying "no way" and checking out of the story.  The film stays just believable enough for you to think, "truth, stranger than fiction," even though the film is obviously made up.

Slowly, the film unfolds the unlikely but inevitable bond shared by the two castaways, with Pi coming to care deeply for Richard Parker, providing him with food and helping him to get back onto the raft when he jumps off the ship.  We as an audience are also treated to some truly breathtaking sequences in this period of the film.  Cinematographer Claudio Miranda (who won an Oscar nomination for his work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) really outdoes himself with rare beauty captured throughout these sequences, particularly the scene of the whale jumping out of the water and diving back into the ocean (a sea of glistening color onscreen), as well as the carnivorous island that Pi and Richard Parker find themselves upon (I have to say, from a practical standpoint, I just don't think I could have left that island, even if it was going to destroy me and drive me mad-going back into the water with Richard Parker seemed like a bit of a fool's errand, but Pi's a bigger man than I).  If Miranda doesn't add another Oscar nomination to his résumé as a result of this, there is no justice.

Ang Lee, in my opinion, slightly botches the ending of the film, when, after Richard Parker and Pi finally wash ashore on the coast of Mexico, and Pi tells the tale of his heroic rescue with a tiger, he also tells a different story after the investigators demand something more believable, more realistic.  In the book, from what I understand, the ending is meant to be far more ambiguous, where it truly is a contest for the reader of which version of the tale to believe.  In the movie, it becomes much more obvious, due to the pained look on Irrfan Khan's face as he tells the tale, that the second, more graphic tale, where the cook, Pi's mother, a wounded sailor, and Pi are onboard the raft, and acts of murder and cannibalism ensue, is the true story.  The writer spells it out for the viewer that each of those four people mirror the different animals that had been in the story earlier, and we are left with the impression that the better story, the story we choose to believe, is the one with the animals, even if in our hearts we know the truth.

The film is a wonderful, somewhat family adventure film, and well worth your time, though in conclusion, I can't say I loved it the way that I loved Crouching Tiger or Brokeback Mountain or Lust Caution-some of Lee's earlier works.  While Sharma is very good as Pi, the rest of the cast is somewhat lacking for me, and it was hard to not see the routine story that was unfolding before me, albeit in strange and wonderful ways.  At the end of the day, the plot could boil down to the same story that drives all man-in-the-wilderness adventures, and I guess I've seen this script one too many times to be able to be completely knocked asunder by it.  But between Lee's handy direction, and some impressive technical achievements behind the camera, you should definitely catch this soon, and on the biggest screen you can find.