Life of Pi
(USA, 127 min.)
Dir. Ang Lee, Writ. David Magee
Starring: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Adil
Hussain, Tabu, Gérard Depardieu.
If 2012 does not go down in history as one of the best years
for movies, then it will certainly be remembered as a year of ambitious
adaptations. Theatres and festivals have already unveiled a score of imaginative
page-to-screen renditions such as Anna Karenina and Cloud Atlas among
films based novels that were largely thought to have been “unfilmable. Like Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight's Children or Jack
Kerouac’s On the Road, Yann Martel’s acclaimed Booker Prize winner
Life of Pi is another 2012 film whose
source I once said could not make a film. The main premise of the book sees a
young boy name Pi share a lifeboat with a giant Bengal Tiger named Richard
Parker. It is one thing to shoot a movie on a lifeboat with Tallulah Bankhead,
but it’s a whole other logistical/practical conundrum when the star is a giant
carnivorous cat. I speculated that Life
of Pi could only ever be adapted as an animated film, with the magical
fable of Martel’s prose finding an appropriate visual equivalent in artificial artistic
rendering. It seems that director Ang Lee has imaginatively found the best of
both worlds, as he uses the latest in visual effects to transport the magical
realism of Life of Pi into the real
world.
There are moments in Life
of Pi in which an affectionate cat person will be touched by the realism of
Richard Parker’s sly and endearing expressions. It’s like watching one’s own
little calico swim in the ocean, catch a fish, or eat a hyena. (My cat would
probably run from the fish.) Richard Parker, a scene-stealer, is certainly this
year’s Uggie.
The creation of Richard Parker, as well as the other animals
and visual effects like the astonishing shipwreck, demonstrates how the barrier
of the unfilmable novel seems to have been broken by contemporary cinematic
wizardry. Ang Lee realizes the sequences aboard the tiny lifeboat with a keen
eye for Pi’s playful story, and the score by composer Mychael Danna is sure to
accentuate the emotional odyssey on which Lee takes the viewer. Thanks to
groundbreaking special effects, a director like Ang Lee can collaborate with a
team and visualize the same images with which a novelist can only use words to guide
the imagination.
Visual effects aside, though, Life of Pi still struggles to prove that everything novels can do
film can do better. Life of Pi ranks
somewhere in the middle of the adaptation scale for 2012: it’s hardly Anna Karenina, but it is considerable a
better take on the book than On the Road
is. Lee’s strengths in bringing life to Pi
are consistently undercut by the shortcomings of the adaptation itself. Written
by David Magee (Finding Neverland), Life of Pi is a stilted and often
heavy-handed cinematic equivalent to Martel’s novel.
The main flaw in the film is the addition of a wholly
unnecessary framing device and embedded narrative that sees the adult Pi
(Irrfan Khan) narrate his story to an unnamed author (Rafe Spall). It’s a lazy
device that lifts Pi’s narration from the novel and uses it as an instructive
guide to highlight the themes of the film. Khan is a great narrator, but the
present-day scenes overemphasize the Christian allegory of Pi’s Biblical boat
trip to Canada. The novel, admittedly, contains the same religious overtones,
but Magee’s script makes them the overarching take-home point for Pi’s journey.
The embedded narration also mutes the magical realism of the flashback scenes,
as Life of Pi cuts from the glorious
scenes with Pi and Richard Parker as they cling to life to a static
shot/reverse shot between Pi and the author as they hammer in the Biblical
Coles Notes.
In spite of the awkward Bridges
of Madison County-esque sentimentality of the scenes with the author, Pi’s
story aboard the boat is enough to satisfy fans of the novel and moviegoers who
haven’t read Martel’s book. Likewise, even though the final dialogue between
the adults mutes the playful openness of Pi’s narrative, the stunningly
beautiful special effects will leave every viewer wrapped in the magic of
storytelling. Cat people or not, moviegoers are sure to feel as transformed by
their experience with Richard Parker as Pi was.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Life of Pi is currently
playing in wide release.
