Made Me Wish I Could Believe in God

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2013)

I read "Life of Pi" years ago and remembered little of the details about the book other than that I enjoyed it. During the first half hour or so of Ang Lee's screen adaptation, I felt myself getting bored and restless. It seemed like a religious movie, a movie whose central premise was all about reaffirming a belief in God. As a non-believer, I don't begrudge films with religious themes, but I also don't really enjoy them, feeling like someone invited to a party where everyone else is speaking a different language.
But then the main thrust of the story kicks in, the young boy Pi is stranded in the middle of the ocean with a lifeboat and a tiger, and I was engrossed by the beauty and spectacle that Ang Lee delivers. And then toward the end, there's a twist that I instantly remembered from the book as soon as it happens in the film, and that I can't believe I had forgotten. For that twist is what makes this film something beautiful and much more than a simple story about faith in a higher power. Instead, it becomes a story that gets much closer to the motives behind what I think drives most people to religious faith, and that is that believing in God is way more comforting than the alternative. Some people seem to be able to choose to believe, while others (like myself) simply can't, no matter how much more appealing life seems with a strong belief in a higher power. People will argue probably forever over this film's ending and what it means, but that's what it meant for me.
Ang Lee needs to be commended. This film had to be a very difficult directing feat to pull off, confined as it is almost entirely to a lifeboat and a slew of CGI effects.
A truly wondrous and wonderful film.
Grade: A