Did you love Life with Pi? What was the story really about? Do you ever feel like acting up like Richard Parker - feeling snarly and a little bit wild? Or do you, like this image shows, like to ponder your life and watch the horizon?
Ang Lee's masterful movie proved a visionary treat. The dedication to the story showed, as did his love of storytelling.
The film opens in India. I was fascinated in the threads of the narrative that there was a French territory in India established in the 17th century. Called Établissements français dans l'Inde, it even lasted past the difficult separation of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Within this French territory there was a zoo and a family. The hero of the story, Pi, had to deal with school bullying and a father who believed strongly in the 'new India' following Independence and preached a rational and scientific worldview. Undeterred by his father's insistence on rationality, Pi explores religion and adopts three religious perspectives, intertwining Hinduism, Christianity and Islam into his young life.
The story moves from India when the family can no longer afford to keep their zoo. The zoo's animals are packed up and along with the family, board a cargo ship destined for Canada. But on the way tragedy befalls these human and animal migrants.
Amidst huge seas, wild winds and a wicked storm, the immigrants' boat is shipwrecked and sinks. Pi escapes in a lifeboat with four zoo companiion animals - a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a marvellous and stately Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker.
The life-boat becomes the stage for the rest of the film's action as Pi clings to life knowing he could become prey, not only to the Tiger (the other animals had already become food for one another), but to the sea and its magnificent creatures.
Pi lives by chance and ingenuity. He clevery disgorges the contents of the life-boat and builds a crafty life-raft that keeps him just out of reach of the Tiger's lifeboat haven. He manages to find food and water to keep both of them alive.
Richard Parker is beautiful, fearsome and aloof. Like Pi, he is lost at sea but not to his Tiger instincts. As the adventure unfolds, both human and Tiger arrive at some kind of impasse and understanding that each needs the other to survive. There's a stand off but love is apparent in the 'soul' of the Tiger's eyes.
The key to the film is resilience and the human-Tiger spirit of connection and reciprocity. Humans too are wild creatures - we are nature, and also part of the natural world. To live well, we need to work with and take care of nature (including Richard Parker's wild nature) to sustain our lives.
Does the story make us believe more in religion or God as the storyteller intends it to? Well maybe for some viewers. For me, the film clearly shows the spirit of invention and creativity that humans need for survival in a precarious world. It captures the sacredness of the human spirit, the essence of the wild (within ourselves and others), and relishes in the wonders and bounty of the sea.
Pi is cleverly able to adapt to the challenging conditions that the water throws up. As he gets to know the vagaries of the waves, the fish and the capricious weather, Pi learns to engage with a magical environment that delivers food, beauty and sometimes heartache.
In a world endangered by extreme weather events and climate change, where Tigers are themselves endangered by human culpability, it is the actions of Richard Parker that resonated with me. Just as human and Tiger are on the verge of death and resign themselves to their fate, the sea envelops the life-boat and sends it to the shores of Mexico. As Pi lies on the sand, spent, he watches his friend walk into the jungle without once looking back.
Pi and the Tiger live, in part through Pi's smart and rational survival skills, and in part because both have faith.
Questions
- What did you enjoy about Life of Pi?
- Did the effects detract from the story - could you ignore the animation skills or simply put the techical effects to once side and immerse yourself in the story?
- Was it simply a choice of one story or the other? Or could both stories exist in parallel?
- Do you think that rationality removes magical imagination? Why?
- How important is story to humankind?
- How important is a belief and a faith?
Image source
http://screenrant.com/life-of-pi-movie-ending-spoilers/
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