All the better for waiting for

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2012)

When I read Yann Martel's magical 2001 novel a couple of years after it was published, I was aware that there was interest in filming it, but I could not imagine how this would be done. The delay of almost a decade in bringing the story to the screen has worked to the benefit of the enterprise because, as well as attracting the directorial talents of the wonderful Ang Lee - who has made such terrific films as "Sense And Sensibility", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain" - the technology has developed so much that the combination of Lee's art and CGI science is an absolute triumph.
At the core of the movie is the 227 days that young Indian Pi spends aboard a life boat with only a 450lb Royal Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, a female orang-utan called Orange Juice, a zebra with a broken leg, and a hyena for initial company. Amazingly this part of Pi's life is represented by Suraj Sharma, who has never acted before and even had to be taught to swim, selected from more than 3,000 boys seen, and only 17 at the time of most of the filming in a vast tank of cold water in an abandoned airport in Lee's home nation of Taiwan.
I saw the film as Lee wants it to be seen - in 3D. I confess that I am not a fan of this format and, since the magnificent "Avatar", I've seen little successful use of it. However, "Life Of Pi" works brilliantly in 3D since it is such a surreal story.