Visually beautiful, strikingly brilliant but damaged by 3D gimmickry.

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2012)

My recollection of Yann Martell's source novel is hazy but, yes, I know the outcome and, no, I'm not about to spill the beans. However, I invited a friend who hasn't read Life of Pi to join me for the screening and he declined saying "I watched the trailer and it clearly has no basis in reality" and promptly made a statement, based on his assumptions, which, if I repeated it here, would cause bellowed accusations of plot spoilers.
His other main point was that the trailer rekindled bad memories of What Dreams May Come, a film with a fantastic car crash that then became, well, a car crash. And so it was with trepidation I approached Ang Lee's epic, hoping for the quality of The Ice Storm and dreading another Hulk.
In actuality, the film in Lee's canon it most closely resembles is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for its visual splendor. Even when not relying on visual effects, Lee paints his images across the screen with confidence and striking brilliance. The colours excite, the movements draw the viewer in and we are invited to admire a sumptuous ballet of shapes and hues that are sometimes stars, sometimes jelly fish and always beautiful. At one point, the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) explains to the writer (Rafe Spall) that the water in the pool was unbelievably clear, and so it is with Lee's shots and effects; on numerous occasions one isn't quite sure if the lifeboat is floating on a clear sea or in the sky, and it highlights the hugeness of Pi's world, life and God while accentuating what a small but significant part he plays in it.
As with Avatar, the principal attraction of Life of Pi, for those who have seen the trailer but not read the book, may well be the spectacle upon the screen and the apparent strangeness of his imagery. Those viewers will not be disappointed and that is where Lee excels. The beauty of the story belongs to Yann Martell and Lee nurtures it, almost babysits it, rather than adapts it. His opening scenes that introduce us to Pi Patel, his family and the zoo they run in India are fun, lively and provide a fascinating game of Which animal is that?
But there is a sense that Lee is enjoying himself too much with these moments rather than favouring pace in order to satisfy the studio's demands for 3D 'moments'. For the most part, the 3D format (alas, there was not a 2D option last night) learns from Avatar's example and presents us with a far greater depth of field and a richer experience, but too often Lee slips into gimmickry with lizards running at us and poles lurching into our faces. It isn't funny and serves only to distract.
For those who loved the book, Life of Pi is a faithful adaptation (from what I can recall); it is always a challenge for a director to recreate on screen the images we have firmly on our minds, but at least the story remains in tact. For those entering this film without the literary experience, very simply this is a story of a young man whose parents decide to sell their zoo and emigrate to give him and his brother a better life. En route they are shipwrecked and Pi (Suraj Sharma) finds himself adrift in the vast ocean in a lifeboat in the company of a tiger, a zebra, a hyena and an orangutan.
But far, far more than being a simple film about man and beast hoping for a miraculous rescue, Life of Pi is about a lad's search for depth, meaning and a divine influence on his life free from the prejudices and constraints that govern others. At one point he prays, "Thank you, Vishnu, for introducing me to Christ." My principal complaint is not with the film but the presentation, which so badly affected it. Yet another huge black mark for Cineworld Bristol. Whilst the staff is generally top banana, the ineptitude of their projectionist reflects very, very badly on the cinema. Exactly how difficult is it to ensure the film is projected in the correct aspect ratio so as not to scalp characters and entirely lose the subtitles; that the screen's masking panels are set so as not to further reduce the image size; to ensure the speakers along the right hand side of screen seven, as mentioned in at least three previous reviews, are working correctly; and that we don't endure repeated blackouts over the first twenty minutes as s/he attempts and fails repeatedly to rectify the issues? Cinemas have little control and no interest in preventing customers from talking and using mobile phones throughout performances and so it is left to us, the paying customers, to intervene (and, yes, I did!) but they emphatically are responsible for the presentation of both video and audio of the film we have paid to see!
Consider yourselves chastised (again!), Cineworld!
But, not even an inept projectionist can alter the impact of a fine film. You may not understand every reference or see reason behind every beautiful, fantastical image in Life of Pi but that matters not a jot. I'll give the final word to the beguiling hero, Pi: "If it happened, it happened. Why does it have to mean anything?"
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