Ang Lee’s confident version of the ‘unfilmable’ novel is a visually sumptuous piece and a lyrical voyage through the meaning of faith. It will have film critics and award organisers in raptures but, while acknowledging that Life of Pi is a wonderfully crafted piece, it never really got my pulse racing or my emotions churning.
The film starts with a Yann Martel-alike novelist (Rafe Spall) arriving in Canada to interview Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan). Pi has a story to tell, the writer has heard, that is so fabulous that it will make the listener see God. Pi begins to relate his upbringing in the French part of India and how his father ran a municipal zoo. The young Pi (full name Piscine as one of the family had a thing for swimming pools) flirts with all the major religions, not seeing why one has to choose a particular denomination or definition. His mother is fine with this but Pi’s dad is a self-professed rationalist, telling Pi that ‘believing in everything is the same as believing in nothing’. With Pi a young man (now played by Suraj Sharma) and lately in love, the family relocate, with all the zoo animals, to Canada but a savage storm sinks the ship with only Pi surviving in a lifeboat. He is not alone however, as also on the boat is a ferocious Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Can the pair possibly survive?
From the off Life of Pi sets out its stall, with idyllic views of the Indian zoo and a combination of real and CGI animals (including a very unconvincing elephant â€" why couldn’t they have got a real elephant?). This is a film that is keen to impress you with its colours and visuals, quickly establishing a heightened reality that suits Pi’s larger than life tales. The first section details his early life and is all very agreeable with India looking ravishing rather than impoverished. Many of the shots are beautifully composed, especially Pi’s barrel chested uncle filmed from below swimming under pretty Parisians in the pool that gave Pi his name. It’s as if Lee has tarted up the start of Slumdog Millionaire, removing poverty and replacing it with local colour.
Things change once the family board the fateful ship which will never reach Canada. There’s racism from a blink and you’ll miss him cameo from Gerard Depardieu as the nasty ship’s cook and then the sinking of the ship itself. This is realised with a blend of real life action and CGI which is seamless but feels false as it is so seamless. It’s impressively mounted cinema nonetheless, with the young actor being bombarded by gallons of water as CGI zebras bound around the deck. Any youngster in the theatre (it’s a PG) would have these moments burnt onto their cinema retina as much as I have the Imperial Star Destroyer and Bond skiing off that cliff.
Surviving the storm, Pi is horrified to find he is sharing his boat with not just an hyena, an orang-utan and a zebra but Richard Parker the huge tiger. In moments that become hugely significant right at the end, the animals turn on each other leaving only Pi and the tiger left. The rest of the film mainly details how Pi tries to survive while sharing a boat with an animal that would happily eat him. The tiger is realised through computer imagery and is an impressive piece of work, looking and acting like a genuine animal although some shots are less convincing than others. It is still a large step towards being able to represent real living things convincingly through CGI and shows how far we’ve come since Terminator 2, The Abyss and Jurassic Park.
The film settles into a rhythm here, with Pi and the tiger trying to outwit each other until coming to a grudging acceptance. Lee fashions some magical moments, especially a whale erupting out of the depths at night through a carpet of fluorescent jellyfish. I’m sure in 3D (I caught it in 2D) that moments like this would be jaw dropping but none of the visual flair can properly disguise that this is all a little leisurely, even sedate at times. As events proceed and the pair end up on an island populated by thousands of meerkats, we begin to question have truthful Pi’s narrative can be and this is increased when, upon finally reaching populated land, his story is not believed by the authorities. It is here that Pi gives them an alternative story, one they can more readily believe â€" but is he in fact telling the real story, one that is far more horrific and personal?
It is here that we come to the crux of the movie’s message. The writer asks the present day Pi which version is the truth, to which Pi replies ‘which one do you prefer?’ Here we come full circle, reminded of how the young Pi was fascinated by the iconography of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam and saw no contradiction in taking parts from all of them. It’s almost as if he is saying that we can pick and choose the God we want, or that God cannot be explained or contained by one telling. When no-one really knows for sure, why shouldn’t you choose the version that you like the best? If it’s more magical to believe that there was a tiger on the boat, why not have a tiger? Like all good fables, the storyteller passes his tale onto the next teller, letting him decide which version to pass on himself.
Destined to be a film that wins awards and ends up being shown on Christmas Day, I have no idea how good a job Lee has done in realising Martel’s novel (funnily enough a book about a bloke on a boat with a tiger never appealed). Purely based on the film I found the story of Pi diverting enough and the look of the film is gorgeous. Lee once again confirms his reputation as an artist and a craftsman and the cast, especially poor Sharma who spends most of it acting opposite nothing, all turn in warming performances. For me, however, Life of Pi lacked bite, a tad ironic when one of the main characters is a bloomin’ great tiger.
GK Rating: ****
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