Beautiful but unmoving

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2012)

I found this to be a beautiful, enigmatic and meaningful movie. In the end, the cinematography is what stands out for me. The landscape and village in India, the vividness of the shipwreck, the scenes of the ocean (and the wondrous things that occur there) and the algae island -- it was all quite beautiful.
Ang Lee also did a fantastic job in showing how the main premise of the book (i.e. a boy stuck on a life boat with a tiger) could actually work. I simply couldn't buy into this metaphor until Lee showed it to me on film.
It's astonishing how lifelike the computer-generated tiger was. The whole movie hinged on this. It worked brilliantly.
How many of the beautiful images were real? It's so well done that I really do not know. It's possible that most of the movie was computer generated. A cartoon, essentially. If so, it was technically brilliant, but it leaves me wondering about the film going experience. What did I just see exactly?
Related to that are my reservations about the realism of the ocean scenes. Beautiful, yes, but do such things actually happen on the ocean? I'm still not sure. I'd like to know.
What was the religious message of the movie? We are told that it delivers a profound message, but I'm afraid I couldn't really get it from the movie itself. I don't mind a movie that makes you think, but should a movie have the effect of making you scurry to the internet to find out what it means? The metaphors here were too complicated.
I suspect this movie might speak more to the faithful, or at least to people whose minds are still open to faith. I'm afraid I'm on the same side as appa and amma, and this movie did not convince me otherwise. This is a movie with a profound message, but it's a message I didn't quite get and I think I reject, the artistry notwithstanding.
I have to add that, although I am easily moved, this film did not move me. It did not really evoke an emotional reaction in me (apart from wonder at the beauty). That's the main reason for my score. On this point the movie failed for me. Perhaps I need to see it again, but I didn't empathise with the main character (either the younger or older versions). I'm not sure why though.
To me, the twist at the end complicated the movie enormously and raised disturbing issues. Yes, I would have preferred to see the movie about a tiger rather than the alternative, but how on earth does that relate to religion? I'm sorry, but I didn't get it. Yes, faith and your particular religion are choices, but so is the decision to reject faith and religion as superstition. And I long ago rejected the notion that the grandeur of nature, or the beauty of art, is proof of God's existence. That is nonsense.
To be honest with you, if Ang Lee had filmed the alternative version in the same beautiful way, perhaps that would have been a good movie too. I might have preferred a more realistic horror-adventure film. Or is there some rule of cinematography that a movie like that would have to be ugly because of its theme? There is beauty in evil too.
But I write this review as someone who has not read the book, so what do I know.