Review of Life of Pi (2012) by David N — 25 Jan 2014

I did everything to avoid seeing this. With the greatest respect to Ang Lee, it just looked like he might have let indulgence take over and produced the worst kind of disconnected cod-introspective rubbish, because he can.

I now sit ashamed of my own narrow thinking as I remember what a great movie he made. In fact, I almost hope the arthouse audience at large hated this film for having too much substance. It looks terrific, for a start, and is another positive step for genuinely artistic use of the 3D craze.

My other nagging doubt - that I didn't want to spend two hours with an obviously CG tiger that was supposed to be convincing - was allayed as soon as I realised how sparingly it would be used, and how intelligently - Lee's no fool.

He did what a director should strive to do and took me out of myself, as did the magnetic Suraj Sharma, sharing with us multiple types of terror as the seemingly doomed drifter - keeping things afloat, if you will.

(hopefully you won't) Nothing is repeated, nothing is laboured, a new turn round ever choppy wave. It's a truly exceptional piece of movie directing given to a decent, unmistakably Eastern story that was frankly privileged to get it.