November 24, 2012
-
Movie Review: Life of Pi
I’ve seen lots of cool movie trailers in my life, but the Life of Pi trailer that debuted over the summer arrested my attention like few others. A young man, a hungry tiger, an open boat, the vast lonely ocean — what was this?!
I’ll confess — I didn’t read the book. I know everybody’s talked about it for years now, and I wish I could say I keep up with all the best things to read. But life is busy and I mostly manage “reading snacks” from Flipboard and the occasional chapter out of a novel. So I can’t speak to how well this film reflects the novel.
It’s a stunning film, one that held my attention for the entire time. The story focuses on Pi, whose real name got him mocked in school so he changed it to “Pi” in an attempt to escape the bullying. I’m sure there’s some symbolic significance, but I don’t have enough degrees in that field to say for sure. Anyway, combine a zoo with India with a shipping accident and you end up with an Indian kid adrift for almost a year, traveling by open boat from off the coast of the Philippines to Mexico. An incredible tale in its own right. Go watch it.
So it pains me to say that I don’t know how to handle the sudden turn toward story-ambiguity at the very end of the film. I understand all the literary purposes of that device, and I grasp the ramifications. I guess it took what had been delightful and engaging and made it suddenly dark.
I don’t want to give anything away, and that limits my discussion here. Let me just say that I scratch my head wondering if the author really means to imply that Faith is a matter of people choosing to believe the cooler story of a God Who Cares over the brutal reality of a cold impersonal world. Maybe I’m just not Hindu enough to “get it.”
Anyway, I definitely recommend the film, and hope you take time to see it.
