The Universe Inside

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2013)

"Krishna opens his mouth, and Yashoda gasps she sees in Krishna's mouth the whole complete entire timeless universe!"
The following is a story Pi's mother recounts to him as a kid. The young god Krishna was wrongly accused of eating a bit of dirt. When his foster mother, Yashoda, knows about it, she scolds him and orders him to open his mouth, inside which she sees the whole universe; lands and skies, planets and galaxies, past and future, hopes and fears everything.
This religious Hindu story should be kept at the back of your mind throughout the entire film for it sets ups the stage for Pi's life. The movie starts with the adult Pi Patel who narrates to a novelist his own survival adventure; how he survived a violent shipwreck in which he lost his entire family and his father's zoo animals, and how he managed to coexist with a Bengal tiger for weeks on a stranded lifeboat. The story of Pi, originally written by Yann Martel and adapted to screen by David Magee, succeeds in stripping the confusing issue of faith down to its core. Pi, the result of a world which is part secular (the father) and part shyly religious (the mother), represents the modern man with all his anxiety, confusion and questions. The young Pi could feel a greater power controlling the universe even though he could not place or define this power. That is why he became a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim, all at the same time.
The movie is dense with symbolic cues that will need to be revisited and reconsidered every time you ponder on Pi's adventure. First of all, we are told that the Bengal tiger is called Richard Parker because its original name, Thirsty, was swapped with the name of its hunter in the registers. When young Pi gets attached to Richard, his atheist father feels obliged to prove to him that Richard is merely a beast and that it is not soul that he sees in the tiger's eyes but only a reflection of his own emotions. Whether the tiger had a soul or was only a reflected image of Pi is left to the viewer to decide. Moreover, Pi's adventure in the sea can be interpreted as man's journey through life, full of hopes, hardships, miracles and letdowns. Everything Pi encounters helps in his emotional, spiritual, and intellectual growth. However, what makes Pi different is that he manages to live life and see (and make us see as well!) the universe as reflected inside him.
The ending of the film is absolutely brilliant. It gives place for both doubt and belief equally because, as Pi puts it, "doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing. After all, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it is tested." After the shipwreck, the hypo-narrative (Pi's adventure) gets divided into two parallel, if not opposite, stories; one is miraculous and incredible, and the other is gruesome yet realistic. The adult Pi gives us the freedom to choose between the two because, according to him, both stories entail the same amount of suffering and sacrifice and have the same result and choosing to believe in one of them depends on the person's internal universe. Simply put, in any given moment of your life, you have all the reasons to be happy and you have all the reasons to be sad.. it is you who chooses, and it is you who writes the story. And this is how faith works. This is how God works.
Life of Pi is certainly Ang Lee's masterpiece so far; thoughtful direction, celestial cinematography, breathtaking visual effects, and mature and vivid performance by both Suraj Sharma, who masterfully captured Pi's earlier years of confusion and restlessness, and Irrfan Khan who played the adult Pi with sincere, hard-earned maturity and confidence. The film is relatively long, but there is not a single moment you will feel the slightest tinge of boredom throughout this completely immersive experience.
Life of Pi is a feast for both the mind and the eye. A definitely must- see.