Only now and then does a film come along where 3D technology achieves its maximum potential. There is extraordinary power in the total effect of many scenes in Life of Pi, a dazzlingly constructed adventure tale of a shipwrecked Indian boy and a Bengal tiger cohabitating aboard a lifeboat. Perhaps not since Avatar has the use of stereoscopy approached the level here.
With no star actors and a supporting cast of a flock of flying fish, a nasty hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, a huge whale, and numerous meerkats, Ang Lee’s adaptation of the Yann Martel’s Man Booker prize-winning novel also achieves new highs in its use of color and the until-now often underwhelming motion-capture technology. Just as Lee took the martial arts drama and ripped it a new asshole in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, here he gives Kipling a 21st-century run for his money. Yet his feel for authentic character traits so ably displayed in films like the The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain are also evident in Life of Pi.
When the real star of the film is a computer-generated tiger, there ought not be any inkling in the frame that actor Irrfan Khan, as Pi, the Indian boy, was actually alone in the 26-foot lifeboat while filming his scenes. (As such, my apologies for providing a spoiler if you would rather have not known that.) The boy and the tiger’s struggle for territory aboard the lifeboat and an adjacent raft which Pi must resort to for safety, make for a drama of the most basic order. While not remarkable intellectually (the device of the much older Pi narrating the story to a Western writer is largely a cliche) Life of Pi soars on a primordial level. The scope of the film is awe-inspiring: a torrent of unbridled nature in its exorbitant splendor. Not too shabby a storyline enriches the visuals: a vegetarian Hindu boy who also immersed himself in Christian and Muslim traditions battles his father, who despite owning a zoo in Pondicherry, India, impresses upon Pi the notion that animals have no souls. Pi disagrees. He tests the question after he finds himself on the lifeboat with one Robert Parker, moniker for the Bengal tiger who, along with other inhabitants of their zoo, was aboard a sinking freighter with Pi and his family en route to North America.
Lee’s film engages in far less religious navel-gazing than Martel’s novel. Good thing. After weeks at sea and a spell on a magical island, the viewer is presented with a quandary at film’s end. It is less a philosophical brain-teasing twist and more of a matter-of-fact coda to give us even more pause as we consider what we’ve just witnessed. Contemplation gives us plenty of answers without The Answer. Meanwhile, some damn pure cinema just wrapped us up and sent us home.
4 Schools of Fying Fish Attacking A Kid and A Tiger On A Damn Lifeboat (out of 5)