Review of Life of Pi (2012) by Jacob M — 30 Mar 2014

"I much rather have you believe in something I don't agree with than to accept everything blindly, and that begins with thinking rationally.".

For about two years I've heard massive acclaim on a film titled Life of Pi, directed by acclaimed (and sometimes controversial) filmmaker Ang Lee and based on a novel considered to be unfilmable, and with a story involving a boy and a tiger, it's easy to see why I was skeptical of the film, especially when the tiger would obviously have to be a CGI creation. And even after looking at the massive acclaim on the film and the awards it got, I was still a little skeptical, even though I was growing slightly more interested the more I heard the film's name. And now it's been two years since Life of Pi has been released and I've finally had the chance to see Life of Pi. Is it worth its hype? Well, coming from someone who missed out on super acclaimed 3D showings, even on a flatscreen TV, I was still very impressed with this remarkable motion picture.

Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) is just a young man living in India who struggles to figure out what he wants to be in life. His father (Adil Hussain) runs a popular zoo and the only interest Pi has is religion, particularly Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. The family, in hope for a better life, leaves India and travels with the zoo animals by boat to Canada, but a ferocious storm shows up, and Pi is the one survivor of the shipwreck. Stranded all alone on a lifeboat with a couple of surviving animals, particularly a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, Pi has to figure out how to survive at sea and find ways to control the tiger before he gets eaten.

The film also stars Irfan Khan as the adult Pi, who's telling his life story to a writer, played by Rafe Spall.

Life of Pi is a remarkable moviemaking achievement. The digital cinematography is simply stunning, particularly shots at sea, which is actually a tank in Taiwan (but still impresses even if you didn't know that), and the visuals are mind blowing, some of the most realistic and convincing CGI in recent years. The detail on the tiger is made so strong that in many scenes, I thought it WAS an actual tiger on the boat with Suraj Sharma. While I missed the film in 3D, the film still managed to impress me visually even in 2D, , and there were some scenes that still managed to make me feel like I was watching it in the third dimension, such as a scene involving flying fish.

With a lot of these acclaimed digital films, main criticism has been that the visuals play the main role, and the story is weak, and that's a common criticism in films like Avatar (which I loved) and Gravity (which I have not seen yet). But in Life of Pi, the story is just as powerful as the visuals. Anyone that's had to suffer so much as the main character can easily relate to what Pi is going through, though maybe not as life threatening, and Suraj Sharma acts brilliantly. Even though its been two years since Life of Pi's release, it seems like he still hasn't gotten recognition for this film, and that's a shame, because Sharma has one of the strongest performances I've seen in a child actor, in most cases, acting more like a young adult than a kid, and that's what's great about his performance. If Sharma doesn't appear in more films, then Hollywood is missing a golden opportunity. What also surprised me was the religious aspect of the film, where Pi discovers God while in his situation. Even if you're not that religious, I think anyone can watch Life of Pi and still find strong emotions out of the overall message. Also impressive is the film score by Mychael Danna, which is very moving and very mysterious in places.

The story may have been considered unfilmable, but Ang Lee has made a modern filmmaking masterpiece, one that will definitely be called an essential in the next 30 years or so. The digital filmmaking is likely the most stunning I've witnessed, more so than Avatar and Hugo combined, the visuals are out of the park, and the emotional content delivers. I haven't seen any of Ang Lee's other films, which includes Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or Brokeback Mountain, but even if I do attempt watches of his other acclaimed films, I don't think his other films will top Life of Pi in my book.

" I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.".