Movie Review #50 Life of Pi (2012)

- Rub-a-dub dub, a boy and a tiger in a tub

Coming down to the wire with a few days left till Oscar night. I actually watched Life of Pi awhile ago but wanted to wait to release this review till now. I was unsure about many films getting enough attention to get enough hits and wanted some higher profile reviews for the end. This and Argo tomorrow I figured would be a solid choices having already reviewed Django and Zero. Now I’m not for heavy-handed religiously preachy films and was rather wary of this film from what I (unintentionally) heard. While I'll touch on this later, it certainly wasn't insultingly over religious as I had previously thought. My review for Life of Pi is as follows.

Life of Pi is up for a whopping 11 Oscars: Best Film, Directing, Writing of Previously Published Work, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Visual Effects. Just by playing the odds you know it's going to get a few of these. It's certainly a strong contender for visual effects and while I think Ang Lee has a chance at director, Spielberg probably has the better chance. As for Best Film, unfortunately I don't think it really has much of a chance, but I certainly wouldn't be displeased with its win (unlike, say, Zero Dark 30). I just don't think it'll capture the Oscar, similarly to Django Unchained in that it is a personal favourite but doubtful to win as I'm not on the voting committee. Still I'd like it to win three maybe. I'm not sure I can see it winning more unfortunately.

The movie starts in Canada with a writer (played by Rafe Spall) interviewing an adult Pi (played by Irrfan Khan) in a rather friendly encounter. We find out that as a child Pi (played by Ayush Tandon/Gautam Belur) had an incredible life and the interviewer would like to write the story. Pi says he was born Piscine which made his childhood rather difficult, as you can imagine, but was able to overcome that by shortening his name to Pi in conjunction with learning the mathematical term “Pi”. Throughout his childhood he gains an interest in religion, not just one but many. The more questions it causes him to have the more interested he becomes. There is quite a lot of information and little touches to the story all prior to the meat of the movie where Pi (played by Suraj Sharma) adventures around the ocean with a tiger in a boat.

I'm not a religious person, I understand the idea of faith far more than religion but I am interested in these topics, and Life of Pi touches on religious ideas throughout but not in an overbearing or a preachy kind of way. Pi himself is interested in religion and he asks questions about faith amongst family who is not interested in it. He prays to various religious figures but in a kind of sneaky fashion. Many people use a deity's name in vain but never think on it that there is some religious belief involved in using it. It's sort of like that. If you think about the movie more than just face value it's a very religious movie but you can view it in a way that is not religious at all.

Look at all that religion!

For a movie that for a strong majority is one person (even more so than Beasts of the Southern Wild) talking solely to the audience, the dialogue is full of ideas and can certainly pose questions for viewers to discuss long after the films credits. The CGI was at places completely spotless. The Tiger while often was real, has seamless transitions to CGI. The other animals and some of the water effects were also rather impressive to say the least. The story of Pi in the boat however is the real bread maker in the movie. It not only shows the great determination of the young boy Pi but shows his soul flourish in the face of unprecedented troubles. The alternative version of the story may be the truth, but truth has never beaten fantasy.

Life of Pi is a really enjoyable movie. A strong and deep meaningful story handled well by Ang Lee who with the help of his actors and a strong CGI presence I think the movie can be a strong addition to your movie list.

I give it 9/10

PS: Stories never explicitly need the truth to be good.