Sumptuous, CGI-Generated Images Bring Martel's Book Vividly to Life

Rating: 8/10 (16 December 2012)

Everybody has their own version of the truth, and the way we frame our own stories may have a great deal to do with a higher level of consciousness for which we all strive. Such is the gist of Yann Martel's 2001 bestseller which is the basis of this visually stunning 2012 adventure drama helmed by Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain"). I read the book several years ago and remember thinking it would make a great animated film by someone as creative as Hayao Miyazaki ("Howl's Moving Castle"). CGI, however, has evolved so dramatically in the past decade that the story can be now inhabited by real actors and awash in gorgeous abstraction that melds the fantastical with the intimate quite seamlessly. Shot mostly in a giant tank in Taiwan as well as on location in India, this movie is a unique example of how technology's endless possibilities can well serve an allegorical story focused on human survival and our own individual coping mechanisms.
Adapted by David Magee ("Finding Neverland"), the story is framed by an interview in Montreal between a Canadian writer, a fictionalized version of Martel, and an unassuming middle-aged man named Pi. The first part of the film is a flashback set in a family-run zoo in Pondicherry, a bucolic former French colony in southern India. The central protagonist is Pi as a child whose sternly sensible father runs the zoo. We learn the origins of Pi's unusual name as it relates to an impossibly pristine pool in which his uncle swam in Paris. At once, you get a sense of the importance of both water and mathematics in Pi's early life as well as his unfiltered concept of religion. In Pi's fertile mind, which religion is a moot point as he adopts Hinduism, Christianity and Islam concurrently and despite his family's resistance. A life-endangering confrontation with a Bengal tiger under their care proves to be a turning point for Pi as he is warned by his supportive family to stay away from it. Later economic hardship prompts his father to decide to move to Canada where he plans to sell the animals.
The stormy journey by freighter turns tragic around the Mariana Trench where the now-teenaged Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with an unlikely menagerie in tow. The party eventually dwindles down to two, and this is where Lee imbues the film with a surreal spirit befitting the tale as we watch the seemingly incredulous situation of Pi co-existing on the lifeboat with the same tiger we saw in his childhood encounter. Dubbed Richard Parker due to a previous mix-up in paperwork, the tiger is integral to a series of eye-catching episodes that involves flying fish pelting them with force, a plethora of glowing jellyfish at night, a breaching whale nearly capsizing the boat, a disastrous storm that carries them to the brink, and a bizarrely florid island overrun with carnivorous plants and curious meerkats. None of these episodes will surprise readers of the book, but the execution is enthralling thanks to the masterful work of Chilean cinematographer Claudio Miranda ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and the visual effects generated by the Rhythm & Hues Studios.
Similarities to Robert Zemeckis' "Cast Away" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" are probably not without intention on Lee's part, but this movie manages to hold its own. My one complaint about the film comes toward the end when things are spelled out a bit too deliberately considering how symbolic the story has been expressed up to that point. Pi is played by four actors depicting the character at different ages. Suraj Sharma effectively portrays Pi during the challenging lifeboat sequence and obviously makes the strongest impression, but Gautam Belur and Ayush Tandon are also affecting in conveying Pi's evolving psyche during his tender childhood years. Irrfan Khan ("The Namesake") plays Pi in the present with his becalming demeanor seemingly at odds with the incredulous story he tells Martel. Khan's movie wife from "The Namesake", Tabu, shows up as Pi's understanding mother, and Gérard Depardieu appears inexplicably in a cameo as the freighter ship's nasty cook. Rafe Spall ("One Day") plays Martel in a rather nondescript manner. It's not a perfect film, but many of the sumptuous images will likely stick with you for a long while afterward.