Life of Pi: Visually Stunning, Spiritually Preachy

"It was a time filled with wonder that I'll always remember" concludes the adult Pi Patel in the narration of his story at sea in the new "Life of Pi" directed by Ang Lee. "Life of Pi" captures beautiful central images while narrating the essence of the prestigious 2001 novel by Yann Martel. The adult Pi Patel narrates the story in which he as a younger Pi played by Suraj Sharma is stranded in a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker in the Pacific Ocean.

The story begins with an older Pi Patel recalling "the story that will make you believe in God." A young Pi Patel lives with a zoo keeping family in Pondicherry India. A boy of many faiths and moral purity Pi later loses his family and most of their animals in a shipwreck across the Pacific. Being the only human to survive Pi is later stranded on a lifeboat with a ferocious Bengal tiger as he lives a tense relation on a limited space. Throughout Pi has encounters with meerkats storms and challenges to his faith.

Ang Lee does an excellent job capturing 3-D animations that give the film a beautiful palette of colors with still shots of the Pacific Ocean that rivals that of other CGI films such as James Cameron's "Avatar."

The transitions can amaze; in one part of the film Pi looks into the ocean to see arrays of bioluminescent plankton which transform into flowers and eventually into an image of his girlfriend. The earlier moments of the film do well to capture the older French architecture and style of buildings. The animals in "Life of Pi" never lose their ferocity or predatory nature carefully capturing the relationship of fear and competition yet compassion with Pi.

Thematically the film seems to effectively capture the spiritual conflicts of Pi as the narration is heavily Christian dominated with the bout of atheism represented through his dad and his Hindu culture puttering out before the ship is sunk.

Overall readers of the original novel may find that Ang Lee effectively beautifully narrates an otherwise anticlimactic story yet with some insinuations of different faiths.

Even though viewers who have not read the novel may find the montage of scenes at sea to be unnecessarily long in a Kubrick-style they may still appreciate the bouts of humor realis and beauty of nature.

"Life of Pi" opened in theaters on Nov. 23 with a strong box office performance. It earned an opening weekend gross income of over $22 million in the United States alone. It currently has earned a gross income of of $30.5 million in the U.S. and over $40 million worldwide.



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