Review of Life of Pi (2012) by Jamesk — 27 Nov 2012

Ang Lee is a genius who can reach the kernel of every culture he has ever touched. By making "Sense and Sensibility" he convinced the Brits that he has an English heart. By making "Broken back mountain" he convinced the cowboys that he has an American mind. So far all Indians I have met say that they don't see any obtrusive and alien in this "Life of Pi" movie. It's just like a movie made by a native Indian director. (I'll skip all the Chinese movies Ang Lee has ever made, because he was born as a Chinese). In addition, even when we talk about technical parts instead of the culture parts, James Cameron, the 3D movie maestro, has given fully positive comments to Ang Lee's first 3D movie. So far nobody on the earth except Ang Lee can cover such a wide spectrum in his/her film-making experience. Looks like it is not very controversial to claim that Ang Lee is the No.1 versatile film-maker in the world.

Well, now I have to talk about a hidden truth in this "Life of Pi" movie. The movie is actually an artistic film-making practice which depicts the 1st story told by Pi Patel with imagination and fantasies he had to fabricate during his unbearable sea drift. Underneath this surface story, the 2nd story with cannibalism should be the truth: there were 4 people on the boat, the uncouth cook (corresponding to the hyena in Pi's fantasy), the nice sailor (corresponding to the zebra in the fantasy version), Pi's mother (corresponding to the orangutan in the fantasy version) and Pi (corresponding to the tiger in the fantasy version). The Pi person in the fantasy version (the 1st story) corresponds to the incarnation of Pi's faith. The entire sea drifting experience (after the other 3 people died) was a struggle between Pi's animal side and Pi's faithful side. Once the boat landed on Mexico seashore, Pi returns to the civilized world and his animal side goes away. Think about the fact: if the 1st story (the fantasy version) is true, then lots of the movie scripts are redundant and useless. It is hard to believe that a maestro like Ang Lee will commit such ostentatious mistakes.

I typically rate A.O.Scott @ New York Times' movie review highly. But this time A.O.Scott fails to read Ang Lee's subtle messages embedded in the movie. He just fails to understand the story.