Movie Review - ‘Life of Pi’

By Bob Garver

“Life of Pi” is the best film of the 2012 Thanks­giv­ing sea­son. The film is expertly crafted by Acad­emy Award-winning film­maker Ang Lee, it fea­tures an amaz­ing debut per­for­mance from actor Suraj Sharma, it has per­haps the most beau­ti­ful water and aquatic life ever depicted on film, and there’s a big Ben­gal tiger just wait­ing for you to show it love. Despite all of these attrib­utes, the film has failed to climb higher than fifth place at the box office for the past two week­ends. Fifth place over a lucra­tive hol­i­day week­end is not exactly a shame­ful per­for­mance, but I would like to see it do bet­ter. There’s still time for you to give it your family’s busi­ness while fleet­ing kid­die junk like “Rise of the Guardians” falls like a rock off the charts.

The film’s early scenes depict the child­hood of our hero Pi (Sharma) as he grows up in India. He over­comes bul­ly­ing through math­e­mat­ics (or at least mem­o­riz­ing num­bers); an inspir­ing feat that I’m sure would get him bul­lied even worse out­side of this uplift­ing movie. His fam­ily runs a local zoo, and his father teaches him at a young age to respect and fear the ani­mals, par­tic­u­larly a Ben­gal tiger named Richard Parker. He exper­i­ments with var­i­ous reli­gions, and his fam­ily has a spir­ited dis­cus­sion on the sub­ject of spir­i­tu­al­ity. These scenes are sur­pris­ingly com­pelling and work­man­like con­sid­er­ing that they take place before we get to the action. You’ll get a real appre­ci­a­tion for the dynamic and chem­istry of Pi’s fam­ily, which sadly means that you’ll miss them all the more when they van­ish in a spec­tac­u­lar shipwreck.

Pi soon finds him­self the lone human sur­vivor of the wreck, shar­ing a lifeboat with a pitiable zebra, a sym­pa­thetic orang­utan, a mali­cious hyena, and the enigma that is Richard Parker. Per­haps inevitably, the boat’s crew is quickly down to Pi and Richard Parker. At first Pi lives in fear of Richard Parker, sur­viv­ing on a makeshift raft inde­pen­dent of the rel­a­tive lux­ury of the lifeboat. Slowly the two form a bond of mutual depen­dency – Richard Parker depends on Pi to pro­vide him with his future food sup­ply and Pi depends on Richard Parker not to make him his future food sup­ply. This rela­tion­ship built on fear and need grad­u­ally turns into one of respect and friend­ship as the two share the expe­ri­ence of a lifetime.

The film never misses an oppor­tu­nity to look absolutely gor­geous. Scenes set on land are none too shabby (my favorite being a lush, unspoiled island) but it’s at sea when the film is really a feast for the eyes. Col­or­ful marine life pops up all the time to remind our heroes that they are a small part of a big thriv­ing world. The water itself is spell­bind­ing, often harsh and unfor­giv­ing, but on rare occa­sion so tran­quil and glasslike in con­sis­tency that I could swear the boat had washed ashore. The ani­mals are, of course, ren­dered flaw­lessly to max­i­mize the emo­tional impact. Richard Parker is legit­i­mately scary at times, but believe me you’ll be feel­ing for him when he gets thin and mangy. For that mat­ter, you’ll be equally moved by the per­for­mance of Suraj Sharma as Pi starts to look thin and mangy himself.

“Life of Pi” is filled with moments that are meant to be savored. Maybe the last act could go along at a faster clip because Pi is telling the story as an adult (Irrfan Khan) so we’re fairly sure of the out­come of some of his do-or-die deci­sions. Pi’s story is more inter­est­ing when the ques­tion is “how does he?” than when the ques­tion is sim­ply “does he?”. Even then the film man­ages to throw some uncer­tainty into the nar­ra­tive. Such is the chal­leng­ing nature of “Life of Pi”, one of the most intel­li­gent, excit­ing, and impres­sive fam­ily films of the year.

Three Stars out of Five.

“Life of Pi” is play­ing at the Her­shey Cocoaplex. Call 312‑1300 for show­times and other info. The film is rated PG for emo­tional the­matic mate­r­ial through­out, and some scary action sequences and peril. Its run­ning time is 127 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Dec 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.