A Review of Life of Pi

By Shaik Azhar Madar

Plenty of Gods, but Just One Fellow Passenger
Life of Pi is a 2012 American survival drama film based on Yann Martel's 2001
novel of the same name. Directed by Ang Lee, the film's adapted screenplay
was written by David Magee, and it stars Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan. It is
derived from the novel of the same name Life of Pi, which is a Canadian
fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001.
Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, the #1 international bestseller and
winner of the 2002 Man Booker (among many other prizes). He is also the
award-winning author of The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (winner
of the Journey Prize), Self, Beatrice & Virgil, and 101 Letters to a Prime
Minister. Born in Spain in 1963, Martel studied philosophy at Trent University,
worked at odd jobstree planter, dishwasher, security guardand traveled
widely before turning to writing. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with the
writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.
Ang Lee is an Academy Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter
whose films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Life of Pi and Brokeback
Mountain. Ang Lee was born on October 23, 1954, in Taipei, Taiwan. He
attended the National Taiwan College of Arts and then traveled to the United
States, where he studied at the University of Illinois and NYU. Lee's
directorial debut was Pushing Hands in 1992. In 2013, Lee picked up his
second Academy Award for directing Life of Pi, based on the acclaimed best-
selling novel by Yann Martel. The honor marked the first time a director won
the Best Director Oscar for helming a 3-D movie. Life of Pi also garnered
awards for cinematography, score and visual effects.
This review consists of book summary, then differentiating the book from the
movie and finally my experience with Life of Pi.
Book Summary:
Yann Martels Life of Pi is the story of a young man who survives a harrowing
shipwreck and months in a lifeboat with a large Bengal tiger named Richard
Parker.
The beginning of the novel covers Pis childhood and youth. His family owns
and runs a zoo in their hometown in India, and his father is emphatic about
being aware of the wildness and true nature of animals, namely that they are
not meant to be treated like or thought of as people. Early in Pis life, his
father realizes that his sons naivet about the tiger in their care may put Pi
in danger. To illustrate how true and real the threat is, he forces the children
to watch the tiger kill and eat a goat.
Pi goes through a significant religious awakening in his formative years,
eventually subscribing to a variety of religions: Hinduism, Catholicism, and
finally Islam. Although the religious leaders dont accept Pis plural religions,
his family gradually does, and he remains a devout follower of all his
religious paths for his entire life.
When Pi is a teenager, his family decides to sell the animals and immigrate
to Canada on a cargo ship named Tsimtsum. A terrible storm occurs during
the voyage, and when Pi, excited to see the storm, goes onto the ships deck,
he is tossed overboard and into a lifeboat by the crew. The next morning, he
finds himself in the company of a badly injured zebra, a vicious hyena, and a
matronly orangutan named Orange Juice. Hiding out of sight, beneath the
canvas of the lifeboat, is the tiger Richard Parker. The hyena wounds and
eats the zebra, then goes after Orange Juice. The orangutan puts up a good
fight, but the hyena ultimately kills her. Richard Parker finally makes himself
known by killing and eating the hyena. Now only Pi and Richard Parker
survive on the lifeboat.
How Pi and Richard Parker survive in the Pacific Ocean makes up the rest of
the novel. Pi realizes he must survive the elements while adrift in the lifeboat
and that Richard Parker will almost certainly eat him. He quickly sees that
thirst will kill him sooner than hunger or the tiger, so he sets about finding a
way to get water. He discovers provisions stored in the lifeboat, including
biscuits, water, water purifiers, a whistle, and a handbook for surviving at
sea. With the tools of survival in hand, Pi builds a second watercrafta raft
made of oars and lifejacketsand attaches it to the boat. With this second
watercraft, he can remain out of both the shark-infested waters and Richard
Parkers immediate reach. He considers a variety of survival options and
concludes that he must tame the tiger. Although he is unable to fully train
and domesticate Richard Parker, by blowing a whistle and rocking the
lifeboat enough to make the tiger seasick, Pi is able to subdue him and
secure his own territory on the lifeboat.
Pi goes temporarily blind and loses his mind. He begins having a
conversation with Richard Parker in which they mutually fantasize about the
kinds of foods they would like to eat. Pi fixates on vegetarian delicacies, and
Richard Parker continues to revise the recipes with meat as the main
ingredient. At first Pi is morally outraged at the idea of eating meat, but then
he realizes that it is Richard Parkers preference. During this fantastical
exchange, another castaway in a lifeboat appears, also blind and also very
hungry. Pi allows the man, who speaks with a French accent, on the lifeboat,
believing him to be a true companion. The man attacks Pi, saying that he
intends to eat him; Richard Parker attacks and consumes the man.
Richard Parker and Pi eventually find an island, which is made entirely of
trees, roots, leaves, fresh water, and plants. However, Pi makes a horrible
discovery that causes them to leave the island: Believing he has found a
fruit-bearing tree, Pi peels back the layers of a piece of fruit to find that it
contains a human tooth. The island is a carnivorous being, consuming
everything that lives on it. Pi and Richard Parker return to the lifeboat and
the ocean.
An undetermined amount of time passes, and Pi and Richard Parker arrive in
Mexico. Richard Parker runs into the wild and is never seen again. Pi is
brought into custody, given food, and questioned for some time by two
officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport.
The officials transcript of the conversation reveals that they do not believe
Pis story in its entirety, and they tell him so. Initially Pi sticks to his story, but
then he offers them another, somewhat similar story in which he shares the
lifeboat with a crew member of the sunken ship, his own mother, and a foul-
tempered French cook who eventually kills both Pis mother and the
crewman. Pi tells of how he then stabbed the French cook in the throat and
watched him die. This second account seems to satisfy the skepticism of the
questioners, but they admit to Pi that his account of surviving with the tiger
aboard the lifeboat is a better story.
Book versus Movie:
In breathtaking 3D and featuring stunning visuals, director Ang Lee
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain) brings the story
to life on the big screen. Although Lee does his best to stay true to the story,
there are clear differences between the film and the novel.
Pis Love Interest: In both the novel and the film, Pi is devastated when he
learns that his family is leaving their hometown of Pondicherry, India, and
heading to Winnipeg, Canada, but the film takes the liberty of adding a
character and giving Pi a love interest who does not appear in the book.
In the film, Pis parents are concerned to find that he is practicing Hinduism,
Christianity, and Islam all at once. Pis mother orders him to work for a dance
class to take his mind off of things, and one of the dancers catches his eye.
He follows her and her friends one day after class and is caught off guard
when she confronts him. Pi manages to smooth things over and takes her on
a tour of his familys zoo. The two eventually form a relationship, making Pis
move to Canada much more difficult.
PG Rating: After reading the novel, its hard to believe that the film
adaptation is rated PG. With four animals, including two carnivores, stuck on
a small lifeboat with no food, its safe to assume that nature will eventually
take its course. After a few a days on open water, the hyena attacks the
injured zebra, and the novel graphically describes how the hyena eats the
zebra alive and eventually kills Orange Juice as well. Pi is also forced to hunt
despite being raised vegetarian and is even desperate enough to try and eat
Richard Parkers feces as well. The book isnt for those with weak stomachs,
but the film spares viewers all the blood and guts.
Richard Parker: Pis relationship with Richard Parker varies greatly between
book and film. In the movie, Richard Parker is extremely aggressive and
while Pi manages to survive with him for 227 days, he never manages to
tame the tiger. In fact, there is one scene in which Pi attempts to train
Richard Parker by getting him to associate the sound of his whistle to the
sensation of being seasick. But when Richard Parker still shows signs of
aggression, Pi gives up on the training.
The book, on the other hand, shows that Pi is very knowledgeable about
animals from his time at his fathers zoo. He is very cautious around Richard
Parker, but he quickly asserts himself as the alpha male and marks his
territory on the boat. Pi is also more deliberate in his training with Richard
Parker and has him literally jumping through hoops by the end of the book.
On multiple occasions, Pi also notices Richard Parker making a sound known
as prustena noise big cats makes to show they are not aggressive.
Pi Loses His Mind: Towards the end of the book, Pi loses his vision when he
runs out of food and fresh water and he begins to have a conversation with a
voice he believes belongs to Richard Parker. The two discuss their favorite
foods, and it becomes clear that Pi is losing his mind. He then has an unlikely
encounter with another man who is stranded at sea. Desperate for food, the
man attacks Pi but he is killed by Richard Parker. The sequence didnt make
the film and probably wouldnt have translated to the big screen. But it is a
pivotal chapter in the book as it is the least probable part of Pis story and is
the first time the reader sees Pi as an unreliable narrator.
The End: Life of Pi ends with Pi being interviewed by two insurance men who
are trying to figure out how his familys boat sank. The men have a hard time
believing his story and ask him to tell them the truth. Pi tells a second story
that directly reflects his first, but instead of animals, he is stranded on the
life boat with his mother, a cook, and a sailor. The similarities between the
two stories make it clear that his mother represents Orange Juice, the cook
represents the hyena, the sailor represents the zebra, and Pi represents
Richard Parker.
While both book and film share the same ending, their tones are much
different and can lead the audience to different conclusions. In the novel, Pi
appears annoyed with the two men and almost seems to tell them the story
just so they will leave him alone. But the similarities force the reader to
decide which story is true. When Pi tells the story in the film, he becomes
visibly upset, especially when describing his mothers death. Where the
ending of the book is much more ambiguous, the tone of the film seems to
suggest that Pi made up the story with Richard Parker in order to cope with
the horrible things that happened on his lifeboat.
My experience with Life of Pi:
Central beliefs and faith of a person seldom change with a book or a movie
theyve watched. So did mine. Ive never believed in God, even from my
childhood, and probably never, and solely based on scientific evidence that
God exists or not. People believing in God as a concept is something that I
can understand, but a concept that doesnt explain anything unique without
its existence is generally useless concept to begin with. What I am saying is
that I am a normal person with desires, ambitions, emotions and stuff who
merely acknowledges the fact that the universe is indifferent to you.
As we know that there was a perfect storm at sea and Pi somehow finds
himself adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a huge
Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The smaller animals fall victim to the
food chain and Pi is left alone with the tiger. We are now faced with a simple
question, are there two animals on the boat or one human and one animal?
This is one of the pillars of our belief system. If we believe that we humans
are in a league of our own and above all other animals, we fall roughly into
the camp of those who also believe in intelligent design and therefore puts
us immediately at loggerheads with environmental issues. To accept
Darwinian evolution and mix it with spirituality is one of the key challenges
and part of the bigger question of reconciling science and religion in a post
industrialized world.
Pis father is a rationalist, and is quite perturbed to see his son embracing
religion with gusto. Few people have their faith or lack thereof tested as Pi. If
it had been his father on the boat and not Pi would he have acted differently
and survived? That is a question to which I can only say that faith has its
uses. When belief in God is absent there is belief in self and the strength to
face death secure in the belief that there await no frightful hell or fanciful
heaven, that we must play the card that we have been dealt by life. I belive
that we need to have faith in ourselves.
Children are born atheists and amoral. They acquire morality and faith or a
combination of both as the result of a variety of factors driven primarily by
parents. I was drawn to the creamy layer of Hindu Gods (out of the teeming
masses of no less than 33 million) when I listened to stories of the Ramayana
and Mahabharata. At school i prayed to a christian God every day. Yet i lived
happily in an atheist household. My parents gave me the gift of choice, while
gently reinforcing their rationalist standpoint which I think they regard it as
their moral duty, just as their parents felt it was theirs to imbibe in them the
fear of God.
The key question of why Pi was drawn to religion remains open. He ends up a
professor of theology. The 200+ day ordeal can change anybody profoundly.
The trapped Chilean miners contemplated resorting to cannibalism to
survive. Danny Boyles 27 Hours is another true example of the triumph of
the human spirit when the protagonist amputates his own arm to survive. So
the fictional story of a boy who survived impossible odds should not make us
religious.
The film is shot magnificently, its a superlative act of visualization to bring
this story to the screen and Ang Lee certainly has that gift. Intriguingly, the
way he handles the Indian angle of the film and the prelude to the fateful
voyage reminds me of Mira Nairs work in The Namesake which was a lesser
film but filled with some of the same elements, a boy who grows up with an
improbable and embarrassing name, the presence of Irrfan Khan and Tabu
and the challenges of an immigrant family in the alien landscape of America
as a nuanced adventure, thematically similar to Pi stranded with a tiger in
the vast oceans.

There is a scene at the end of the film where Pi parts ways with his feline
companion. Richard Parker does not look back at Pi to bid him farewell and
walks away unemotionally while Pi sobs with heartbreak. The tiger and its
fear kept Pi alive, which is an interesting counterintuitive logic where fear
keeps us alive. Perhaps an emotional void is mans biggest enemy. As he
recounts the story many years later his eyes well up with tears again. We are
supposed to feel that humans have a monopoly over emotions and this sets
us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, which is factually incorrect.
Richard Parker deserves to be cut some slack as he has just survived an
equal or probably even greater ordeal at sea!

Mention must be made of Suraj Sharma who went to the audition to

accompany his brother but landed the role out of 3000 aspirants. He does an
outstanding job as a gangly youth who fights his circumstances with
remarkable ingenuity and pluck. But the star of this visual feast must surely
be the CGI tiger who looks us in the eye and brings to mind William Blakes
classic poem The Tyger (a wonderful way to spell, sadly rectified in our
school anthology) from his collection Songs of Experience, which was a sister
poem of The Lamb. Pi is the Lamb here. When the Royal Bengal Tiger walks
into the pages of history he will not look back with emotion at us humans
who proved to be his worst enemies. We will be left wiping away our tears at
having lost the most beautiful creature ever to our greed, indifference and
arrogance. William Blakes poem brought to life by Ang Lee in the Life of Pi
will hopefully survive for our children to fire their imagination.