Ang Lee films the unfilmable

Rating: 8/10 (9 November 2013)

Director Ang Lee adapts the interesting Yann Martel novel. Considering all the big name directors previously attached to the project, he does an admirable job bringing this unfilmable movie to the big screen.
Pi Patel lives his childhood in Pondicherry, India with his zoo owning family. Eventually they had to sell their animals to the west, and move to Canada. They travel on a Japanese freighter with the animals. The ship sinks and Pi gets to a lifeboat with a menagerie of animals including a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Much has been said of the great CG animals. I don't need to add more to that. The lifeboat scenes look great. Ang Lee has filmed the unfilmable. I do wish the island be more otherworldly to clue in the unrealism of the story. And the island had a more religious overtone in the book which is missing here.
I also wish they filmed the real lifeboat with the people characters. A visual depiction would be much more dramatic. The violence could be cut out if they needed to keep the PG rating. In fact the ratings might be why they decided to reduce that section to a simple narration.