Religion takes a battering in this year’s Christmas movies at the multiplex, at least the more prestigious ones (both based on prize-winning novels). The robots in Cloud Atlas [see opposite page] long for “Ascension”, but their hoped-for Heaven turns out to be bloodier and messier. Then there’s Life of Pi, in which teenage castaway Pi (Suraj Sharma) lashes out at God in rage and despair: “I’ve lost my family! I lost everything! I surrender – what more do You want?”. Shouldn’t they be saving this stuff for Easter?
Pi is ‘Piscine’, named after a swimming pool in France – but his full name prompts schoolmates to (yes) take the piss, so he shortens it to the mathematical constant instead. Pi and his family (parents, older brother) live in Pondicherry, India, where Dad owns a zoo and Pi tries out various religions, being simultaneously a Christian, Hindu and Muslim. “Religion is darkness,” warns his dad – a symbol of the “new India” – but Pi won’t be swayed. Years later, as an adult, he tells his story of survival at sea to a writer, who’s heard it described as “a story that would make [him] believe in God”.
God again? Yes, again. Unlike Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, which set out its themes more discreetly – and worked as a Robinson Crusoe-like adventure yarn for those who missed them altogether – this film version makes its allegory crystal-clear from the very start. Every third line seems to be about God or religion; even small details are significant, as when the film makes a point of showing Pi saying grace at the dinner table. I wouldn’t say Life of Pi was dumbed-down, exactly, but it does seem quite disdainful of the multiplex audience’s ability to figure out what’s being said without tons of help.
That’s a bit annoying, and it’s also annoying that the film (widely acclaimed as one of the few 3D movies to make effective use of the technology) is only being shown in 2D in Cyprus. On the other hand, the visuals are magnificent even without the extra dimension – especially at sea, when Pi survives a shipwreck and finds himself stranded on a lifeboat in the vast expanse of the Pacific. The water is crystalline, his boat reflected as in a mirror; the night lights up with shoals of glowing fish, even the storms have a terrifying grandeur. “God, I give myself to You!” cries our hero, overcome by this beautiful vastness.
But there’s more to it than that – because Pi isn’t alone on his lifeboat. His family were moving to Canada with their zoo animals when the ship sank, and a few of the beasts join him on his makeshift ‘ark’ – though not for long because, animals being animals, they slaughter each other leaving only one survivor, a tiger named Richard Parker. The fact that most of the film consists of a teenage boy and a full-grown tiger on a lifeboat in the Pacific is the main reason why the book (like Cloud Atlas) was considered unfilmable – but Richard Parker has finally been rendered in utterly convincing CGI, and newcomer Suraj Sharma, a boy from Delhi with no previous acting experience, does amazingly well to hold the screen as Pi runs the gamut from triumph to hysteria.
Best of all, what the film is saying (yes, it has to do with God) is rich and complex. Is God really in the beauty of sea and sky, or is it just sea and sky? An analogous question might be ‘do animals have souls?’ – or are they just “your own emotions reflected back at you,” a kind of willful self-deception we all like to practise? “Tell me what you see,” says Pi to Richard Parker when the tiger seems to be gazing up at the night sky – but isn’t Richard Parker just a wild beast who’d happily devour him, and think nothing of it, if he got the chance? “I have to believe there was more,” cries our hero with an edge of desperation; “I know it. I felt it!”. The ending makes the ‘beautiful lie’ thesis explicit, yet retains a certain ambiguity. The film’s final act is the deepest and most satisfying, kicking off with an island full of meerkats which … but no, you’ll have to see for yourself.
Life of Pi is still missing something. Ang Lee (who won an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain) is a very intelligent director, but he’s inescapably genteel. The book addressed Pi’s toilet needs, and the terrible constipation he suffered from a diet of fish and crackers; the film has none of that. Pi suffers, but his face remains handsome (even his blisters don’t look too awful). One key image comes perhaps when Pi spears a tropical fish and hauls it up on the boat, its bright colours fading as it expires – Death defined as an absence of beauty. This is a beautiful film, both in its visuals and its philosophy. Will it make you believe in God? No – that would be far too easy. It’ll make you see why (most) other people do.
DIRECTED BY Ang Lee
STARRING Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Gerard Depardieu
US 2012 127 mins
