Life of Pi - Review by Insha

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.