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Rating:
It took me quite some time to go see “Avatar”; like a pretentious snob, I didn’t want to immediately succumb to the trend of the moment, and I even remember trying to downplay the excitement when I left the cinema, the definite pinch provoked by witnessing a revolutionary visual spectacle. A work specifically designed for the third dimension. I criticized the film's plot, which, to be generous, can be described as insipid if not disarmingly banal, forgetting that for the director, in the first true 3D film, it was important that the eyes have no other distractions. For a global firework success, a linear and immediate path was necessary: bad, very bad against good, very good with some tons of rhetoric and an ecological message that is so fashionable as a cherry on top.
“Life of Pi” is one of the few films that can compete (maybe along with “Hugo Cabret”) at those visual levels with an entirely justified use of the third dimension coupled with a moving cinematography by Chilean Claudio Miranda. Unlike Avatar, Ang Lee’s film is not just an empty box, but an interesting film, capable of moving and striking the viewer with an apparently banal story that alternates drama, adventure, religion, and philosophy and can be enjoyable and fulfilling at different levels of interpretation. I would like to read the book, which in terms of plot, themes, and setting (that drifting in an ever-calmer and whiter sea), hearkens back to Poe's enigmatic and philosophical novel “Gordon Pym”. There is perhaps a citationism towards the naturalistic scenes of “Tree of Life” by Terrence Malick, but they are two films light-years apart. Fortunately, I might add.
Piscine Patel, the protagonist of this story, is an intelligent, curious, tenacious, and resourceful boy: it is thanks to these qualities that he managed to shake off a terrible first name (a phonetic resemblance to the amber liquid produced by the kidneys) on which his classmates naturally pounced like a pack of ravenous hyenas to disgrace him without regard. Peaceful and calm in manners, Pi, his new name, is a boy who listens but does not passively and parrot-fashion accept the lessons from his family and school; without noise and screams, he clashes with the cold, rigid, gray, and mathematical rationalistic vision of life from his father. Pi is Hindu, but also Catholic and Muslim: he does not see why one religion should exclude another since they all have positive elements. He lives in contact with animals at the city zoo, of which his father is the keeper and owner, and is convinced that all creatures have a soul. The proven killer ferocity of the formidable Bengal tiger, Richard Parker by name, will cast doubt for some time on his initial unwavering belief.
Due to a series of unfortunate and spectacular events (see “Titanic”), Pi will find himself in close contact with the feared feline, along with a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena. But the crux of the film, well highlighted by the poster, is the relationship and forced coexistence between the boy and the tiger. The protagonist, of course, will manage to survive (it's not a spoiler as we understand it from the flashback of the first scene), but what matters is seeing how he managed given the exceptional circumstances. The young man is someone who wastes nothing and in a desperate situation will alternate his natural romantic and positive approach to life with the more rationalistic one inherited from his father. The untamable tiger, then, as the incarnation of the everyday dangers he was always warned against; but also a constant hope and irrational gratitude towards God for all those events, only apparently adverse, that will bring him ashore.
When questioned by the surveyors of the sunken ship’s company, Pi will be forced to offer a second version of events, in which the animals are replaced, based on behavioral characteristics, by a sailor, his mother, and the cook. It seems to underline the fact that the differences between man and animal are much thinner than what may seemingly appear. However, it cannot be ignored that in the second story, probably the real one, a character is missing. My interpretation is that in the first version, Pi embodies religion itself, which, in the end, is nothing more than a narrative that tends to embellish, adorn, and reinterpret reality: a bit like the splendid images of nature repeatedly present in the film. Pi is all the three deities he has studied and in which he has faith; it is he who, without asking for anything in return, repeatedly saves the tiger from certain death and who almost breaks down from pain when it moves away without even a growling goodbye.
It is a film that only seemingly is a simple adventure story with great visual work, direction, and special effects, but in reality, it is very tough and deep. The sense perhaps lies in inviting one to limit an excess of rationalism and to take life with more simplicity, also relying on faith. I don’t think it is necessary to share this invitation, in my case, but I am convinced that it is not wasted time watching it and losing oneself in one of the many facets it proposes. Perhaps in one that I didn't even perceive.
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