Movie Review: Life Of Pi (3D)

I read Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, over 7 years ago. I had picked up the book at the Crossword store outside the iMax Dome in Mumbai, and couldn't lay it down until I had finished it.

The book has three parts - part one sets the stage, part two gets interesting with it's fantasy world, but it's really the tiny part three - just the last 5% of the book - that is worth all the effort. It will take a lot of thinking, and a very open mind, but then the possibilities, the implications, simply blow you away.

Piscine Molitor Patel, named after a French swimming pool, is a 16 year old boy in Pondicherry, where his father owns a zoo. His parents decide to emigrate to Canada, along with the animals for sale, when tragedy strikes. A huge storm strikes their freighter, and when the waves have settled down, Pi Patel finds himself on a lifeboat along with a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a Royal Bengal tiger, named Richard Parker.

Ang Lee adapts the Life of Pi beautifully, doing with amazing lighting, visual and 3D effects what Yann did with words. As Pi and Richard Parker struggle for survival, they are pushed into a grand adventure and a spiritual voyage so beautiful, you almost wish they would never be found. Flying fishes, floating carnivorous islands with a million meercats, beautiful glowing creatures of the dark seas, the deadly storms - earth never looked so beautiful!

Is that all for real, or just a tale? The book (and the movie) leaves you thinking, for a very long time after it is over.

Suraj Sharma pulls off a magnificent performance as Pi, showing a range of emotions from anger to ecstasy, from fear to bravado, from the elation of hope to the crushing sense of defeat. The tiger is magnificent, a masterpiece of SFX. Irfan as the elder Pi is also good. Tabu has a small role too. But it is really the beauty of nature exquisitely created and captured by Ang Lee that will blow you away, and keep you begging for more.

This is one 3D movie that is absolutely nice on the eyes - unlike Avataar, which mesmerized with it's fantasy world, but beat the exhausted and over worked eyes into a deep sleep.
Word of caution for parents - the scene immediately after the storm, when Pi gets on the life boat with the animals, and the hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, has the potential to seriously disturb kids. It might make sense to protect them and make them look away during that scene.   Overall, the Life Of Pi is a wonderful visual epic, not to be missed!