Life of Pi

[Paolo]

Sounds like a movie to see, then, then read the book.

That's how I did the first HP movie.

Thanks.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Saw the movie. Strikingly beautiful, visually. Some of the prettiest photography I've seen in a film.

Never having read the book, I wasn't quite sure about the meaning of the film. You can find a way to face your fears and survive? The necessity of companionship? The ultimate unity of all life? There is a Supreme Spirit which binds us all? Something else? I really don't know. In any case, I was left with the impression of something vaguely hippy and trippy from the 1960s, even though the book appeared in 2001.

It was engrossing at first, but started to drag as Pi's ordeal lingered. The ending, while nominally happy, was also frustrating in its ambiguity. If Pi really transmuted an awful experience into a fantastic story, then the movie deflates its own fantasy into the fantasy of one of its characters and loses credibility.

A film of accomplished artistry by Ang Lee, as well made as anything he's ever done, but a less than satisfactory experience for me.

[Slammr (imported)]

Warning: Spoiler alert

Saw the movie. Strikingly beautiful, visually. Some of the prettiest photography I've seen in a film.

Never having read the book, I wasn't quite sure about the meaning of the film. You can find a way to face your fears and survive? The necessity of companionship? The ultimate unity of all life? There is a Supreme Spirit which binds us all? Something else? I really don't know. In any case, I was left with the impression of something vaguely hippy and trippy from the 1960s, even though the book appeared in 2001...

A film of accomplished artistry by Ang Lee, as well made as anything he's ever done, but a less than satisfactory experience for me.

Having read the book and knowing the backstory, I can appreciate the movie as an adjunct, an artist's (Ang Lee's) interpretation of the book. With that in mind, I enjoyed it, but I agree that, unlike the book, it did drag at the end. By the time it ended, I was ready for the credits.

I came to love the kid in the book, mostly from the time he was in India. He was open to everything.

His mother was Hindu; his father secular; but he embraced his mother's religion until he was exposed to the catholic religion, whereupon he became a Catholic and a Hindu. He saw good in both of them and didn't understand why he should choose one over the other. Later on, he embraced Islam, and was a Muslim, a Catholic, and a Hindu. Again, although it drove his father and the head of each of those religions in his town crazy, he didn't see a reason to choose. He embraced them all equally. God was God, it didn't matter what one called him or how one worshiped him. He saw good in each religion. Although I don't believe in a personal god, wouldn't it be better if all the Hindus, Muslims, and Christians felt that way? Wouldn't the world be better off for it?

I arrived at this conclusion before reading the following quote, which I just read:

When pleaded with by his parents to choose just one religion, his answer was that Bapu Ghandi said, "All religions are true." Pi said that he just wanted to love God. Each of the religions had individuals that shooed away or otherwise encouraged him to leave the mosque, the church, or the darshan. Pi simply found a way to avoid such people and continue to go to all three. He seemed able always to take life as he found it and make the best of it. Like when it came time for him and his family to leave India for Canada on a ship with many of the animals from the zoo that his father sold to zoos in North America.

We see only glimpses of this in the movie, and what we see makes Pi look kooky and quaint. It does not convey the feeling of the book. It the book, he's a kid that's open to everything, nature, God, whatever.

I can't tell you what the author intended. I don't generally look for meaning in a book or a movies. I think, perhaps, he's trying to say that God works in mysterious ways, and in this case, worked through Richard Parker, the tiger to save him. Without this tiger on the lifeboat with him, he would have died. This tiger that tried to kill him at first, was never his friend, but without him, he would have given up and died. First it was his struggle to tame Richard Parker that preventing him from giving up, and later it was his efforts to save Richard Parker that kept him alive. God was working through Richard Parker.

The moment Pi decided to train Richard Parker was when he realized he needed the tiger — it kept him from despair and therefore alive — besides they were in the same boat, were they not? Pi had to tame the tiger or they would both die. To be alone he saw as a more formidable foe than the tiger.

Again, I'm reading these quotes after I wrote what I did, so I guess I wasn't far off. http://www.doyletics.com/arj/lifeofpi.htm

Now, I have trouble with that, because if God was working so hard to save him, why did he sink the ship, kill everyone on board, including his family, and strand him on the lifeboat in the first place, but I can gather that might be what the author was trying to say: God can even work through a bloodthirsty tiger. I think the tiger killing the goat was meant to show how wild the tiger actually was.

I agree somewhat about the meerkat island, except it was another opportunity to show that without Richard Parker, Pi would have died. He slept in the tree so Richard Parker wouldn't eat him. In the lifeboat, he was safe from Richard Parker because he had established his territory separate from Richard Parker's and trained the tiger not to enter it. Richard Parker jumped from the lifeboat onto the island first, so if anything he had marked it as his territory. Pi didn't have a territory staked out on the island, so to be safe, he slept in the tree, which saved his life. Otherwise, the island, apparently made up of a mass of floating carnivorous plants, would have eaten him that first night. The plants only fed at night. I agree this was over-the-top, made no sense, and distracted from the story. My reaction when reading it in the book was pretty well the same as bob's.

That Pi would find a human tooth in the one and only fruit he peeled open was incredulous. It clued him that the plants were carnivorous, but even if the plants had at one time eaten a person, what was the chance that the only fruit Pi peeled open would contain a tooth from that person? For me, this was a weak part of book as much as with the movie. I think the author, could have - should have - left it out.

Having read the book first makes it difficult to judge the movie. I will say I was thinking after I saw it, I wish I'd gone to see Red Dawn instead - for what that's worth.

[A-1 (imported)]

Turns out that Pi is a constant ratio...

It is like getting your mind THROUGH the movie dividing through the middle it while in circumspect THINKING completely around it in a circular thought pattern... all in a simultaneous fashion.

[Dave (imported)]

Slammr,

People that care for tigers in zoos or farms or in the circus will tell you that no tiger is ever tame. They are always wild and they will kill without remorse. Tigers and lions will come to know a keeper as a friend and treat them like an equal but that does not mean the tiger or lion is tame. Even when raised from cubs, they still retain the wildness and killer instincts.

And the directors of LIFE OF PI have said that the actor was never within reach of the tiger and vice-versa. They were never together on the set. IT's all great cinematography.

[Riverwind (imported)]

We think about how man has dominated the world and how we tame animals, however of the thousands of different spices of animals we have only domesticated about 25 in the last 50,000 thousand years, and cats have never been one of them and from the Tiger to the common house cat they are not domesticated, anybody who has a cat knows this.

River

[Eunuken (imported)]

I saw Life of Pi this past weekend, I had started out to go see the remake of Red Dawn, but read the reviews and decided against it.

I really enjoyed the entire story, I've not yet read the book; however I've just ordered it from Amazon. I hope to enjoy it more than the movie. I do also plan on purchasing it on BluRay as soon as it is available.

Ken

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

So I finally saw "Life of Pi" this past weekend, and let me tell you, it absolutely blew my mind. This is by far my favorite film that I've seen this year. The visuals are absolutely drop-dead GORGEOUS!!! Plus I love what the film had to say about the nature of religion, and the nature of storytelling in general. It's one of those great films that takes you on an absolute journey, and then takes that journey and is able to subvert it to reveal something deeper and more universal by the end. I just LOVE films like this. It shoots for the stars, and almost always hits. The pacing isn't perfect, the story still leaves many questions by the end, but the film is such a deep story presented in such a mind-blowingly gorgeous presentation, that those things didn't really bother me, because I was too busy gawking at the sheer amount of visual splendor.

I went back to see it a second time yesterday afternoon, because I liked it so much, and needed a repeat viewing to take it all in, and just wanted to see those gorgeous visuals one more time on the big screen.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough for anyone who loves the art of visual storytelling as much as I do, and loves films that are imaginative and fanciful and ethereal rather than grittingly-realistic.

[Dave (imported)]

I finally got the time to watch THE LIFE OF PI ...

It is an excellent movie. When it seems the story is too thin to carry a movie the beauty of the photography takes over and what we see is wonderful.

It is a movie of faith. Pi is a mystic and Ang Lee created a movie about belief in God, not the God of any one religion but the one that watches over all things. The one that sustains all life in all its glory.

I have to read the book.

The question at the end of the story is which story do you prefer?

That's the question that PI asks at the end of the story.

It is the question we all ask -why are we here? --what is the purpose of life?

[Slammr (imported)]

I highly recommend reading the book. It delves a little deeper into this whole question, and I enjoyed the time Pi spent evolving, while in India - given short shrift in the movie - as I did the whole lifeboat-tiger thing.

Given I read the book first, I was a little disappointed by the movie, not that it wasn't a visual masterpiece. I bought the 3d DVD. This movies was best in 3d, but I like 3d movies.