"I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality."This is Piscine ("Pi") Molitor Patel (named after his uncle's favorite swimming pool in Paris) talking to two Japanese investigators near the end of Yann Martel's breathtaking 2001 novel, "Life of Pi." The two men are attempting to piece together why it was that a Japanese freighter called the Tsimtsum went down somewhere in the Pacific in 1977 en route to Canada from India. Pi, quite possibly the ship's only survivor, has lost his parents and brother, and has washed up on the shores of Mexico after a 227-day ordeal that is difficult to believe. In fact, the officials aren't buying it.
"The world isn't just the way it is," Pi tells them, cryptically. "It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?"
Long considered to be an unfilmable novel in equal measures due to its interweaving story of a solitary boy adrift at sea and its thick theology - not to mention its status as a beloved work of literature that fans would react harshly to getting screwed up - director Ang Lee took up what had to be one of the greatest cinematic challenges of recent years, and attacked it using an unlikely weapon: 3-D. The result is a film that has me wrestling with how I feel about it, though not for the same reasons I wrestled with Martel's novel. Whereas the book was a love letter to the power of telling stories and discovering one's spirituality, the film is a technological wonder, a cinematic painting of such beauty that its very strengths become, to some extent, its weaknesses.
To make "Life of Pi" work as a movie, screenwriter David Magee constructs an interview to bookend the narrative and occasionally interrupt it, in which a middle-aged Pi (Ifran Khan) is sitting down with a Canadian writer (Rafe Spall) in Patel's home. The writer is looking for a good story, and met a man in a cafe who told him that Patel's story would "make him believe in God." This information, by the way, is cribbed from Martel's author's note in the novel and used for the film. It's a significant phrase cleverly worked into the film in this fashion.
And so the conversation which in the novel takes place at the end between Pi and the Japanese investigators instead takes place between Pi and the writer, though Pi references his conversation with the investigators. As he did in the novel, the film Pi Patel follows the telling of his incredible story with a second version of it when the investigators refuse to believe what they've heard. In the film, Patel tells his second version to the writer in the film's most unimaginative scene, opting not to dramatize it, Lee's camera fixed on Khan against a white background that reminded me of the opening shot of "The Graduate."
Both versions end with Pi asking the listener: "Which story do you prefer?" It's a vexing question, really. One that conjures to mind the point Tim O'Brien so powerfully makes in "The Things They Carried." But while Martel is able to tap into a powerful spiritual place and reveal the very darkness of humanity in this penultimate moment of his story, Lee's attempt falters. Part of this is because of how that moment is filmed, but most of the reason why is a result of the film's Achilles heel: its shockingly light tone.
I should go back. For those of you who have not read "Life of Pi," do yourselves a favor and download it to your e-readers or add it to your Amazon wish lists. In the meantime, I will fill you in.
Pi Patel lives in Pondicherry, India with his parents and brother, Ravi. His father owns a zoo in town, and due to rising political uncertainty in India has decided to pack up his family and move to Canada. The family boards the previously-mentioned Japanese freighter with many of the zoo's animals, which Pi's father will care for on the journey and sell in North America for better money than he'd get in India.
The Patel family is Hindu, but Pi's father doesn't rely on religion, and his mother clings to it more because it reminds her of her own family than because it spiritually grounds her. But Pi is different, taking to his faith so abundantly that one religion is not enough for him. He soon learns of Christ and accepts Christianity, then Allah and Islam. Before long, Pi is a genuflecting, Mecca-facing Catho-Muslim-du asking his parents to be baptized. His father tries to convince Pi that believing in too many things at the same time is as good as believing in nothing, but Pi won't hear of it.
Pi's juggling of three religions delivers some of the novel's lighter moments, and Lee handily delivers on them. But Lee ends up bringing a similarly light tough to other aspects of "Life of Pi" that needed far darker grounding.
When the freighter is flooding in a storm, Pi escapes to a lifeboat. A screaming zebra leaps off deck and lands in the hull of the lifeboat, breaking a leg. Come morning, Pi discovers that he is not only keeping the company of the zebra, but a hyena as well.
And there is another passenger, one that makes life a lot more fragile for Pi. His name is Richard Parker (so named due to a clerical error, we learn). Richard Parker is a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Pi had been taught from a young age how seriously to take a tiger. So how could he share a lifeboat with one?
Adrift at sea, Pi witnesses the horrors of the circle of life right there in front of him on the boat. The hyena emerges to attack the zebra. Pi's favorite orangutan, Orange Juice, turns up in the water to join them, only to be attacked by the hyena shortly thereafter. And before long, Richard Parker emerges to assert his dominance over them all, sending Pi scrambling to a makeshift sidecar he's tethered to the boat, created from oars, life jackets and a life preserver.
I don't want to reveal every detail of the plot, but suffice it to say that Pi has to learn to live with Richard Parker and considers along the way a variety of options to deal with him that run the gamut from trying to kill him to trying to train him. The book, no surprise, delves into the psychology behind his options in much better detail.
When Pi and Richard Parker do reach land, it's a deserted island populated by meerkats, where things are not what they seem, and even more difficult to believe. Their stay there is brief, and the two set out to see again, this time by choice, until they meet the shores of Mexico just as both of them appear very close to death.
The novel is divided into three parts, with the second being Pi's time at sea. This middle section accounts for two-thirds of the book's pages. Lee's translation to film is almost identical, and maybe it shouldn't be. As with the novel, Lee focuses on Pi's childhood and his discovery of his unique faith in painstaking detail, postponing the dramatics of the shipwreck for quite some time. The result, to some extent, feels like a movie mash-up between "The Namesake" and "Cast Away."
It is certainly a challenge to keep the audience interested in a film that gives us almost no dialogue for the bulk of its running time, that focuses primarily on one man's survival. Certainly the aforementioned "Cast Away" managed because of the outstanding work done by Tom Hanks in that film's lead role. But Ang Lee chooses a different approach. He relies on visuals.
I suppose I've buried this very important detail late into my review, but it's no less important. As a self-appointed 3-D hater, I can gladly add "Life of Pi" to a very short list of films for which 3-D enhances the experience, as opposed to simply adding gimmickry to it. James Cameron, of course, did so with "Avatar." Last year, Martin Scorsese did it with "Hugo," though of these three films, "Hugo" works the best without 3-D, too, if you ask me. And now, we can add Ang Lee to a very short list of directors who successfully made a 3-D version of a film truly better than its 2-D counterpart.
The visuals in "Life of Pi" are simply stunning. Breathtaking. The star of the film. But that is so much the case that I think it contributed in the end to my inability to connect as fully to "Life of Pi" as I was hoping to. Because where the novel is a deeply organic spiritual journey, the film is unable to rise above the wonder of its digital accomplishments. The tiger, Richard Parker, is exhibit A. You will be stunned by how life-like he is. Rarely will you find yourself thrown from accepting he is real. But in moments when their surroundings are painted sunrises, glowing ocean surfaces and vibrant greenery, the film reaches a level of beauty that covers up the darkness and torment of the story.
Lee's technical wizardry is almost too ostentatiously displayed, from the way names are revealed in the opening credits to moments when a cut-out of Pi is superimposed in the foreground over a scene on the lifeboat taking place in the background of the screen. I can't say I've seen a movie that looks this stunning in a long, long time. But I'm sad to say that for me, there was something plastic about it.
This brings me back to the alternate story Pi tells at the end. In the book, it's harrowing. Once you figure out what Martel is doing, you are haunted by it. You are equally haunted by the graphic details of animals killing animals and deeply gutted for Pi when he cries out in anguish as he is forced to eschew his vegetarian ways and kill fish and other animals to survive.
Ang Lee goes for the PG version, and in doing so, the film "Life of Pi" has little of the darkness of the book. Yes, we see that Pi lives through hellish conditions. But we don't see any of it. I became most aware of this problem with the film when, in a packed theater, I sat in horror as the audience around me laughed heartily at a scene where Pi is attempting to train Richard Parker. Was there something wrong with the audience? Or did Lee make a serious miscalculation in tone to allow viewers to relax for even a moment at the sight of a 16-year-old, emaciated boy attempting to train a tiger with a sharpened stick?
So in the end, when the writer is asked which version of Pi's story he prefers, the line feels like a bit of a cheap trick in the movie, whereas the novel's darker grounding gave the moment devastating resonance. This moment was never meant to be one of those "you mean to tell me that everything that just happened wasn't real?" moments. "Life of Pi" is not the final episode of "Roseanne." I walked into "Life of Pi" wanting to be moved to tears. That never happened.
"Life of Pi" is too lighthearted about its spirituality. Too PG to be intense. Too beautiful to be terrifying. Too digital to feel organic. And yet, just as Pi Patel's religions contradict each other, so too is Ang Lee's film one that simply should not be missed. And one of the rare films deserving of your extra dollars for a 3-D experience. And who knows, you might be moved in ways I hoped I'd be.
★ ★ ★
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