Life of Pi is a tale of persistence, survival and discovery.
The movie directed by Ang Lee is an adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel. It is
about a young man named Pi, who survives a ship wreck while losing his entire
family rendering him an orphan. The movie is a delight for animal lovers as it
is teeming with a variety of animals and birds in the backdrop of a zoo with a
melodious background music that just works amazingly with the visuals.
The movie begins with the adult Pi’s interaction with a
writer who is sent by his uncle who he calls ‘mamaji’, with a promise that it
will make him believe in God. The writer and Pi are seen having a conversation
while Pi cooks him some vegetarian food. The writer’s question to the
protagonist about how he came to be called Pi, who is played by the very
versatile actor Irrfan Khan, is how the movie begins, in flashbacks as it is
narrated by Pi himself. It shows how his uncle who is an obsessive swimmer,
names him after a swimming pool in Paris called Piscene molitor and to avoid
being teased he starts doing random things like writing the entire value of the
number Pi and giving little speeches during every roll call. Needless to say,
he succeeds. But the writer’s main interest remains to be in the promise of
making him believe in God which is how the story begins.
Pi begins with his childhood which shows the beginning of
his fascination towards different religions. He visits the church and the
mosque and starts practising the religions along with the religion he was born
in, which is Hinduism.
Pi’s father owns the zoo shown in the beginning of the
movie. Pi when still young tries to befriend the tiger in the zoo, but his
father in the form of punishment and instilling a little caution shows him how
a tiger can’t be a human’s friend, to prove against Pi’s argument of the tiger
having a soul too. He shows how the tiger hunts, by letting Pi watch the tiger
kill a goat kept in front of the cage at the same place where Pi had been
sitting before. After which Pi sobers down his inquisitiveness and his life
until his teen years. His life is uneventful until financial troubles and lack
of help for the zoo’s maintenance causes his family to leave for Canada. This
journey is where begins Pi’s unexpected adventure of discovery.
The shipwreck happens due to some vague, natural conditions
and in the process Pi loses his family making him the sole survivor with a
zebra and a hyena as his companions on the lifeboat. He tries to save another
living form from drowning in the brutal waves, and to his horror he finds that
it’s not a human after all and actually a Bengal tiger. As the storm mellows
down he also saves an Orangutan. As he tries to come to terms with the loss of
his family, he is also scared of the tiger and the hyena that could possibly
kill him.
The wild animals soon end up behaving like wild animals and
killing each other, Pi finds himself in the company of the tiger. With a
survivors guide, few cartons of biscuits and canisters of drinking water, the
boy and the tiger make the extraordinary journey through storms and extreme
periods of starvation. Even with the tested times they make it through, with
immense strength and faith. As the journey progresses the bond between Pi which
is played by Suraj Sharma, a commendable job, and the tiger increases and
becomes deeper.
They experience the beauty of the ocean as they have never
done before, with amazing fish and nautical creatures, which depict the
beautiful gifts of God to mankind, creations that man cannot even fathom. Even
Pi is shown marvelled with what he sees and experiences. There comes a time
when all seems lost, when the boy has gone through all the sufferings and
distress he could bear, and his strength and courage have been tested to the
extreme, when they come across a floating island. The island provides them with
water, food, shelter and an unbelievable number of Meer Kat. But the boy is in
for a toss as the island 'takes everything away at night that it gave by the
day’. This makes Pi realise that the journey does not end here. One realises
through this that God indeed has provided us with everything in this world,
good or bad. But to avoid the trap of human nature, of abandoning a journey
forever for a moment’s respite, anything can prove to be fatal if exploited and
used excessively. Through all of this the boy’s faith increases even more. It
is his faith which gives him the courage to realize that his journey will come
to an end sometime and he will live to see the day.
As the boy, exhausted, reaches the Mexican shore, the tiger
leaves him for a nearby forest along the shoreline without once looking back.
After all that they had been through throughout the journey, Pi realizes the
bond forged between them is as yet unbroken, at least for him, and he mourns
the loss of his only surviving friend while being carried away by a rescue
party. The movie comes back
to the present, as the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) is seen teary eyed, as he recalls
the moment of the tiger leaving him without even a proper good bye.
It is not just through Pi and his story that the movie
claims to initiate belief in God but through those unseen moments, the unknown
creations that humans can never claim to fully explain. It is the beauty of the
world, the hope, the faith that keeps the boy alive with the tiger, the belief
that the tiger has a soul, has emotions that it remembers the past kindness of
the boy. The terrible beauty of the island, the amazing phenomena he
experiences, the faith that keeps him motivated, that stops him from going
insane and losing all hope, and his gratefulness to God with every new
experience, good or bad, it is through all of this that the movie fulfils its
promise to increase belief in God, if you have it in you to accept it. That is
the whole point of the movie, that there are two kinds of people, one who will
watch the movie and only see suffering and chance encounters with help at the
right moments but the other kind will watch it and be in for an amazing
beautiful ride filled with courage and never ending hope. From the former point
of view, halfway through the journey any average person would have completely
lost all hope and given up very early, but this loophole is satisfactorily
explained to the people who support the latter point of view, that repeated
signs from God resulting in the strengthening of his belief even further helped
Pi keep faith until the very end of his journey.
With the digitally created beasts, Ang Lee and his
technicians have done an amazing job of making these animals look utterly real.
The computer generated effects are commendable. The movie as a whole is worth a
watch and must not be missed.
