By Sam Wolstenholm
IMDb: 7.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 86% (Tomatometer) | 84% (Audience Score)
Metacritic: 79% (Metascore) | 7.9/10 (User Score)
(Spoilers...kind of)
About a week ago, I watched Life of Pi (directed by Ang Lee and released on November 21, 2012) for the very first time. Little did I realize, Pi Day was just around the corner (lol, corner...pi...). It all added up too perfectly, so here are my thoughts on only a few aspects of this complex film.
Stories
This movie was awesome. It commented on storytelling as a medium used to make sense of the world we live in. It's meta in that way as this movie is itself exactly that. The purpose of a story is, really, 1 of 3 things: to teach a lesson, to purely entertain, or both inform and entertain. On another level though, all of those can combine into a bigger purpose: to make it easier to go about/understand life in general. The concept of a story, not its content, addresses existential issues. They help us organize some deeply charged emotional memories, ideas, etc. that are hard to make sense of at face value. This story, for example, may or may not have actually involved the animals. A version exists where it was actually people instead. Pi just used the animals as placeholders when retelling the story because it's easier to process and not as difficult to digest when a story is told through animal characters (like your classic fable). The thing is, it doesn't matter which version is real. What matters is the lesson learned & what's going to get that lesson across. And that's where religion comes in...
Religion
This story is kind of a metaphor for religion and how it works/is supposed to work. Pi is a smart, skeptical kid, and he rightfully extends that mentality to religion. He begins to see them as collections of characters and stories in which lessons are being taught. Like comic books. It is up to the audience to decide how much to believe and what they want to get out of it. Regardless of how real any of it actually is, the whole point is to get people to make more sense of their existence and understand the human condition on a deeper level. That is also the point of this film. It's saying "Who fucking cares?" when asked what really happened out at sea. It's pushing the idea that some things are just really fucked up and life can be a lot easier to deal with/get through when those things are processed through non-humans. "We see only reflections of ourselves in the faces of animals." Well yea, especially when the alternative is rabid cannibalism and animalistic acts of survival instinct. I don't think that's the exact quote by the way.
The Island
Alright. I can buy the animals actually being people, but what about that Dues ex machina of an island? What the fuck was that? There were meerkats literally everywhere. Freshwater turned into acid. There was a human tooth seemingly growing from a tree like a fruit. So was the island real or not? Pi seemed to maintain confidence in its existence well after the events of the story took place. However, it seemed to have very surreal elements to it that I don't think would really exist. Nobody had ever found that island. Personally, I don't think it was real. Right before they reached the island, Pi basically gave up. He told God that he was done. It (the island) must have been a vision or dream of some kind. It was Pi's heaven (or the gates of it) in that moment. He could choose to stay there (die) or go back out to the ocean and keep pushing (continue living). I see the island as a microcosm of life and death - a cycle (like a circle...like pi...get it?) - but happening at an extremely accelerated pace. It acted as a lobby or trial run kind of deal for afterlife to Pi. He chose to rejecct the island because that was his only shot at and extended life. He couldn't get that there, even though the illusion of it was present.
Overall
Visually, this film is beautiful. Can't ask for any more than what I got in tha department. It's an inspiring story that's both entertaining and thought-provoking. There's still a lot I could talk about, but I think having your own perspective can be powerful. All in all, I was extremely pleased by Life of Pi. There are only a few things keeping it from being a 10/10. Shortly, those flaws include an unnecessarily long rising action (though it was still packed with important content...it just wasn't as engaging as the rest of the film), the white journalist dude that sounded way too much like Ryan Reynolds (was actually Rafe Spall), and the lack of sharks. In all seriousness, I only have a few small nitpicks and they really aren't that bad. This is one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years, and it only came out in 2012, so...
9.3/10
Have you seen Life of Pi ? I want to hear what you think. What'd I miss? Did I hate your favorite part? Or love something you thought was stupid? Any questions or comments? I'd love to respond. Feel free to drop review requests too! I will strongly consider them.
Peace and love.
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