Will one person in a thousand get it?

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2012)

Ang Lee knows the film goer he is dealing with. Consider the audiences who attend feature films at the local Bijoux these days. Stimulation- saturated activity addicts fumbling with their smart phones and tablets until the lights dim. There is no time to spare. To think. To see. To feel. To reflect. We do what we are told by the "Mad Men" and the other purveyors of common cult-ure.
Do the Wise Men from the East understand our foolishness so well now that they mount their enlightenments in 3D, sfx-saturated, action- adventure epics? What does it matter that =most= sitting behind their dark glasses will walk out remembering only tigers and meercats and fifty-foot swells and (perhaps) visions of a southern Asia still "strange" to most? A few, Lee seems to hope, will understand that life leads invariably to death and renewal, and that it is pointless to beseech "gods" who have the simplest of lessons to teach... on their own terms.
To one who has been through "unmanageable hell," the author of the book clearly knew what he was writing about. Those who cave in and fail to make it through are so often those who cling to the instructions in their "survival manuals." ("Who =wrote= this?" Pi clearly asks.) The survivor learns, slowly, excruciatingly, resistantly how to adapt to the cards he has been dealt by Things As They Are.
And if the experience drives him (or her) "crazy" for a time (because the experience is so far outside his cultural box?) "crazy" may be what is required to make it through. Witness the Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam veteran trying to make sense of life after he has seen so much that is so =different=.
We have at least two films about running through the tunnel of terror in the Big Race this year (the other is "The Master"). The points of view could hardly be more diverse. And the subject is one that, however well both of these films treat it, cannot be anything like "fully" or "completely" -- or even adequately -- portrayed in two (or three) dimensions.