About eight years ago, right after I read Yann Martel's immensely popular novel, Life of Pi, I heard there was a film adaptation in the works. While I loved the book, my immediate thought was that it was unfilmable, that the story just wouldn't lend it self to movie adaptation. Because I really liked the book, I was relieved to hear about the several attempts at filming the story that fell through.
The problem was the story. Basically, it's a story about a teenage boy and tiger sitting on a boat, with the boy's thoughts on life, religion, and everything becoming the subject of his inner monologue. Those ruminations were compelling in book form, but no one wants to watch some kid think about God for two hours. Yet, it is the thoughts and epiphanies of the main protagonist, not the story of what takes place on the boat, that gave the book it's emotional weight. That won't make for a good movie.
For most part, I was wrong.
The story is not unfilmable. In fact, with Ang Lee's cinematic adaptation, the story of the boy on the boat works beautifully, it's the meditations on God that don't work. But, that may not be the movie's fault. More on that in a minute.
For those that haven't read the book, Life of Pi tells the story of a boy named Pi, a thoughtful kid living in India who, after pondering the mysteries of the universe, decides that he is simultaneously Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. As he grows into adolescence, he begins to doubt his faith, helped in no small part by a horrific event he witnessed at his father's zoo.
Eventually, Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and move his family to America. Thereafter, they all -- the family and the animals -- set off on a ship to the States. But, early on in their journey, the ship sinks and Pi is left alone on a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured Zebra, an Orangutan, and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Through a series of events that probably don't need explaining, Pi and Richard Parker end up alone on the boat, adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The crux of the story takes place with these two characters -- the boy and his tiger -- alone on the sea. Like I said, there's not much there to make a movie out of. But, Ang Lee, a master filmmaker, finds a way.
The most important decision Lee made in adapting this book to movie form was to give the scenes on the lifeboat a fantastical, otherworldly feel. Had those scenes -- which, again, take up most of the story -- looked realistic or commonplace, it would have been insanely boring, falling victim to the obvious challenge of putting this story to film.
The fantasy-like feel to the story works for two reasons: 1) (SPOILER ALERT) the events on the boat didn't really happen, they are imaginary; and 2) it allows for fluid use of spectacular 3D visuals that wouldn't have worked atop a more conventional movie canvas.
Like Avatar, Hugo, and Prometheus before it, Life of Pi, demonstrates how well 3D can work in the hands of a competent filmmaker. The look of the film is just stunning. Three sequences stick out firmly in my memory as much as any scene in any movie this year -- the sinking of ship, an encounter with flying fish, and a climactic storm on the open seas -- all of them riveting and nearly mind-blowing in the visual department.
The only problem with the film -- and its a big one -- is that all the great visual storytelling rings hollow, emotionally speaking. I remember the book as being an insightful exploration of spirituality, with the story on the lifeboat serving as a backdrop. The movie tells the story effectively, but then winds it all together with some new-age, simple-minded, unfeeling, all-religions-and-no-religions-are-true gobbledygook.
It works for a lot of people -- the movie is projected to be nominated for a slew of awards. That part of the movie -- the thematic underpinnings -- just didn't work for me.
Still, the film is an astounding technical achievement and Ang Lee deserves plenty of kudos. I'm now thinking that the spiritual underbelly of the story in the book may be just as thin and trite. If that's the case, I suppose one can hardly blame the movie for being that way as well.
Perhaps I need to read the book again.
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