Life of Pi[i] fulfills all of the
promises that James Cameron’s Avatar[ii]
made. Ang Lee (of Brokeback Mountain
/ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
fame) makes a beautiful, effects-heavy film that isn’t about action, but serenity.
Lee’s film is even more gorgeous than its spiritual predecessors[iii],
earning the right to use the borderline gimmick 3-D technology. Films like Life of Pi use 3-D to make their worlds
more real, not pop-out of too-dark backgrounds, and really, without the
technology that James Cameron helped pioneer, they would not be as successful.
But this
is in no way a James Cameron film. It is created from Ang Lee’s gentle mind and
with caring hands, never being harsh or abrasive or surprisingly even preachy
given that Life of Pi is a
faith-based film. A surefire bet to dominate the technical awards during the
Oscars nominations on January 10th, Life of Pi uses special effects to create a wondrous tone poem that
earns its sentiment through high-stakes and through amazing compositions.
The movie
does start a little slow, but as soon as the teenager named Pi, and his family
(and their zoo), set sail to North America, it explodes into a surreal journey
of color and emotion. Pi, the Islamic Catholic Hindu boy who leads the story,
survives a spectacular storm that somehow sinks the ship that takes his family
with it[iv].
On a lifeboat, Pi is stuck with an injured Zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and of
course, a Bengal tiger hilariously named Richard Parker that is crafted from
the most photo-realistic CGI yet exising. After a chaotic and animalistic
battle between the animals, causing Pi to flee to a smaller raft of his own
creation, drifting near the lifeboat, Richard Parker remains alone. The
constant standoff between Richard Parker and Pi is the heart of the movie, and
it is some of the most unique filmmaking of the year. The film is never dull,
even though the setting is the same through over half of it.
I’ve
constantly talked about cinematography this year, and Ang Lee’s Director of
Photography Claudio Miranda is another amazing cameraman who in a lesser year
would have a run-away and deserved Oscar for Cinematography. The camera work
inside the sinking ship, on the lifeboat, the final, Kubrick-esque scenes with
Pi in the hospital bed, and even the opening credits shows that Miranda has an
eye for the thrilling, the extravagant, and the serene. With such a wide palate
of visual flavors, no one can argue that Life
of Pi is anything but the most beautiful film of the year.
Where the
debate begins is whether or not Life of Pi has a worthwhile story and message.
The answer is yes, Life of Pi does
provide a compelling narrative, which is mostly thanks to its unique setting. Putting
a boy on a boat with a tiger, faced with obstacles that should dwindle his strong
faith, whether through starvation or storms or mythical vampiric islands, is
incredibly compelling. The pacing once Pi gets on the lifeboat is flawless, no
matter how shakily it started, and once you get down to the controversial ending,
you are faced with a legitimate moral quandary.
*SPOILER*
This quandary is the debate. Is manipulation a good thing? The film takes a
side, but by bringing up the idea that the fantasy that Pi has given the
audience or a brutal “realistic” story, the film asks us to accept that fantasy
and faith are superior to accepting a terrible world for what it is. Some will
call cop-out, but it is necessary to end the story in this fashion. Pi needs
purpose, and there is no way a fantasy story will make anyone believe in God, not
even C.S. Lewis’s, as he promises the writer interviewing older Pi throughout
the film. If those who aren’t religious roll their eyes at his
manipulation, they would be forgetting what religion is. It is manipulation.
Meditation is self-manipulation of our sense. Psychology and psychiatry are
manipulations of our brains. Art is manipulation, especially cinema, because it
sets us up to believe the fiction before us is real. Miranda’s cold and
symmetrical shot of Pi being interrogated by the Japanese insurance men gives
us the cold reality, with tears and emotional scarring for a lifetime, in
contrast to the wonder of Pi befriending and caring for and protecting himself
from a Bengal tiger. Lee earns this manipulation by arguing for a manipulation
that isn’t there to control the masses, but to tell us that this is a world
worth living in. It is a life affirming manipulation. *END SPOILER*
In the
end, Life of Pi is not about religion
at all, but like Hugo before it, it
is about film and stories. Subtly, Ang Lee, using the screenplay by David Magee
based on Yann Martel’s novel, compares religion to these arts. We need these
fantastic stories to cope with true evils, that truly happened, and we remember
that they happened, but make no sense at all. Why did Pi’s family die? He doesn’t
know. Why did he have to be stuck at the open sea for 227 days? He doesn’t
know. But he knows what he likes to believe. He likes to believe that he is the
tiger, and that the tiger can accomplish anything.
I give Life of Pi a lite 9.
[i] YPOIWer Robby is
taking reigns over a Silver Lining
Playbook review that I was going to write for this 2nd part to
my Thanksgiving Weekend film review feature. He’ll do better than I would have.
[ii] Avatar was a rehash of stories you’ve heard before in a new
setting that was striking, and because it felt so much like other films in
terms of story, it failed to connect as much as its director James Cameron wanted
it to with the audience. Everyone talked about how good the effects were, and
not the film itself. Underneath the amazing visual effects, the movie was empty. Avatar existed to pave the way for
superior films, and for that, we should thank him.
[iii] The spiritual predecessors: obviously Avatar, but also Scorsese’s Hugo
and even Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
[iv]
Eat your heart
out, Titanic.
It's a beautiful film, it's just that the story sort of tears everything down and makes it a tad confusing and odd with where it goes. Still, a good movie none the less. Good review TJ.
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