Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which won the Booker Prize in 2001, has an eye catching and appealingly unique premise. My copy of the book has a short, simple blurb that begins with the tagline, “One boy, One boat, One tiger”. This is the story in a nutshell; what happens when a teenage boy and a tiger are forced to share a lifeboat after a devastating shipwreck, and how on earth does the boy survive? When plans were set in motion to adapt Martel’s novel for the big screen many questioned whether this strikingly strange scenario was filmable.
How many times have we been told that a book cannot survive the transformation into a movie? Yet sometimes the best adaptations are those that seem impossible, because the filmmakers are forced to be as creative as the original author to make the essence of the source material work on screen. Ang Lee’s interpretation of Life of Pi marries the best of the visual and the written word, and in my view can truly be counted as a great adaptation.
Most critics have praised the stunning aesthetics of the film. Lee and his team succeed in bringing to life Indian streets, a zoo, the vast Pacific Ocean and modern day Canada in an at once vivid, realistic and evocative style. Life of Pi is also that rare thing, a 3D film that actually makes effective use of the technology. Sprawling storms, which seem like works of art in themselves, throw froth and rain in your face. The underwater world bubbles and brims with colourful life. Waves lap and crash in lifelike ways, horizons shift and glow in the setting sun. Most importantly of all, animals look, sound and feel alive. When they move they seem like wild, unpredictable creatures rather than computer generated pixels. Some of the footage from the trailers made the animals look like artificial, CGI creations and it is a tremendous relief that in the film itself they are believable. If they were not, Life of Pi’s narrative centre would lose all of its force.
But before the meat of Life of Pi’s key premise, we are introduced to our protagonist, Piscine, or Pi, as he makes himself known. The details of his early life are quirky and interesting, even without his extraordinary adventure at sea. Lee takes a bit of time setting things up, just as Martel does in the book. Rafe Spall plays an unnamed writer, listening to an adult Pi as he tells his story. Irrfan Khan plays the grown up Pi and the first chunk of the film consists of nostalgic flashbacks, with Khan’s voiceover draped over the top. Many films that indulge in voiceover are lazy, awful affairs that can be painful to watch. However, Life of Pi mostly maintains the balance perfectly. The conversation between Spall and Khan simply stirs our curiosity, and rarely outstays its welcome. The narration is also a nice nod to the novel and makes sense given the nostalgia of the piece. Khan’s voiceover also disappears once Pi is stranded alone at sea.
As everyone knows by now, Pi is not left entirely alone with his self pity. He makes it across the Pacific in the company of Richard Parker, the tiger from his father’s zoo. This section of the film, with Pi isolated and no other human characters to interact with, could have dragged, especially without the existential introspection of the novel. However, my interest rarely waned. Lee conjures a powerfully primal confrontation between Pi and Richard Parker, a confrontation that morphs into an odd form of companionship. He sets it all against a backdrop that is beautiful, bleak and overwhelming. You feel Pi’s fear initially (I physically recoiled when the tiger first leapt out of the screen in all its 3D glory) and admire his compassion and reason, as he realises Richard Parker might just save his life. Pi questions his spirituality and everything about his life; he hallucinates and dreams. Of course the novel had the time to go into more detail, but nothing here feels significantly incomplete.
The ending has proved divisive, as endings often are. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian is needlessly harsh with his two-star rating of the film because he found the ending “exasperating”. I may be a mere apprentice compared to Bradshaw but he has undoubtedly missed the point. I do not wish to spoil the ending so I will simply say that it is intentionally frustrating and is clearly designed to provoke questions and debate. It highlights the power of storytelling and examines the nature and value of truth. Indeed, Life of Pi is a film with many intelligent themes, from spirituality to inter-species relations. It is also laced with fun, nostalgia and warmth. In fact, name an emotion you can experience at the cinema and Life of Pi probably covers it at some point.
For these reasons, Life of Pi is a film that you can mull over quietly by yourself or debate passionately with friends. It is a varied and unique cinematic experience, expertly told, that I would highly recommend seeing before the hustle and bustle of campus takes hold again in 2013.
My Rating: 4/5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Average: 4/5 stars
Liam Trim, Screen Editor
You can read a review of the original novel, courtesy of Exeposé Books, here.
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