The beauty and the beast in human (Serious spoilers alert!!)

Rating: 10/10 (9 December 2012)

Spoilers alert!!
The movie to me is more faceted than just 3D.
Pi is the tiger, or the tiger is the embodiment of Pi's animal, beastly side. The tiger was hidden and suddenly "burst" out of the canvas when the orangutan( or his mother) was attacked. Several hints were given throughout the movie. Pi's father told him that what he saw in the tiger's eyes was merely his own reflection. The names switch was another hint, and the same foreshadowing went to the moment Pi asked the tiger (more like a monologue) what he saw facing the big, dark yet glistening ocean. In that still moment, Pi stared into a fragmented, chaotic kaleidoscopic montage of HIS own life, in which reality and imagination could not be clearly defined.
A storm hit and the lightning cracked the sky wide open as if God was manifesting self by shedding a light upon Pi. Pi was awe-struck, but the tiger was intimidated, hiding itself under the canvas. Pi forced the tiger to come out and honor God, but it was trembling terribly, as if in the presence of holiness, the beast was not trained, but almost tamed. What was intriguing was that Pi chose to join the tiger under the canvas for the first time. When the storm swayed him between the sea of sanity or insanity, with God above, was the beast inside the human suppressed or did the human finally become the beast?
Pi is also the human-shaped, man-eating island. Vegetarian as he was, he had to eat meat to survive, including the human flesh as suggested in his alternative story-telling in the end. In the morning, he struggled to survive with no time to think much. At night, his stomach, as well as his conscience, was upsetting. His stomach, or the lakes, was churning with gastric acid. He might have vomited out an indigestible human tooth. The lotus could be his conscience or the human part of him. He "Listen"ed to the lotus as once Anandi had told him to, and fled the island.
After the boat hit the real shore, the tiger strode into the woods without even looking back. Pi felt sad because it was the beast in him that had him survive the journey. But it was the human part of him, or his faith in his faiths, that raised him above his remorse and ordeal. The journey ended, the beast in him was gone(or just hidden until the next episode), and he was back to the human world again.
I guess we can say whatever we want as to which symbolizes which, but above all, it's a phenomenal story told about the beauty and the beast in human.