Film review: Life of Pi Incredible tale with childlike sense of wonder

MANILA, Philippines - I see a tiger and almost by reflex action, I start to think of the much-loved poem by William Blake. “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry.”

In the case of this particular tiger, the hand and eye who dared the framing belong to film director Ang Lee. The tiger is named Richard Parker, the feline protagonist of Life of Pi. His symmetry is not only fearful, it is magnificent. And he glows intensely not in a forest but on a lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean that he shared for 227 days with a boy named Pi.

Pi and his family were relocating to Canada from India with animals from their zoo that they were hoping to sell. A storm sank their ship and Pi and the tiger were the only survivors. Theirs became a strange kind of partnership anchored on the natural need for companionship and the survival of the fittest.

The motion picture Life of Pi is based on Yann Martel’s big selling novel about one man’s search for God and a better understanding of life. Pi, is in fact introduced as a Comparative Religion professor who, thanks to that tiger experience, has sort of established a reputation as a man who has found God.

While Pi’s search is clearly the main gist of the story, Ang Lee chooses to deftly skirt around it and instead zeroes in on the sea adventure. It is a wise, commercially lucrative decision. It is true that Pi did compare Islam, Christianity and Hinduism and at one time was practicing rituals of all three. But how many people do you think would spend two hours inside a theater learning about that. 

But oh how they love watching Pi and the tiger. Kids wonder if they will end up as friends. Adults think death would be inevitable. The suspense alone of wondering if Richard Parker will have Pi for dinner is already worth the admission price.

Those two, whether battling nature’s fury or quietly drifting on the water watched by birds in the sky and followed by fishes in the water in luscious 3D, make for some of the most wondrous sights ever seen on the screen.

They also make you think. A beast can be both indispensable ally and deadly predator. A small consolation is the fact that unlike humans, animals only eat when they are hungry. But Richard Parker will definitely get hungry and it will take all of Pi’s ingenuity and newfound survival skills to keep him at bay.

Also and most importantly, man, at his closest to nature can be both at peace and in extreme danger. Just like Blake did long ago, he looked at his tiger and asked, “Did He who made the Lamb make thee?’ He did. Pi’s acceptance of this is almost stoic. He chooses to survive and his belief that an Infinite being will guide him through the crisis keeps him alive. 

“I am your vessel,” he loudly proclaims and it is this trust that sums up his life. His father was wrong to think that, “If you believe in everything, you will end up not believing in anything at all.” Pi believed and was saved.

Pi’s is an incredible tale and Ang Lee tells it with a childlike sense of wonder and an eye for breathtaking beauty. Sights from the streets of India to the myriad moods of the ocean, sounds, from heavenly music to ominous silence all came together here to create an experience close to spiritual.

It is often that film is a suspension of disbelief. Life of Pi goes beyond that. It inhabits a realm where belief is more important than what is real. Did all that really happen? Was Richard Parker real? Who knows and who cares? It is one great adventure.

What is not so great is how Life of Pi put some tigers, hundreds of meerkats and other animals, plus their trainers out of acting jobs. And so, what actors had feared had finally happened.  Ang Lee’s use of animation in Life of Pi has resulted in images so vivid, it is now impossible to tell where the real ends and CGI begins. 

We might also lose actors soon. Hopefully just movie stars as I will not want to lose somebody like Suraj Sharma, who plays the teen-aged Pi. He is such a joy to watch and has enough star power not to be overshadowed by the too real Richard Parker.