SPOILER!!!! A Divergent Interpretation of The Life of Pi

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2013)

I seldom give ratings of excellent, but after having mulled over this film, and its story, repeatedly for about 6 months, I've come to the conclusion that the story told by the film is extremely powerful, uplifting, and universal.
But it is not the story of a boy in a lifeboat with a tiger, finding ways to co-exist at sea for 227 days...
READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM, BUT WISH TO....
...
The main narrative that occupies the vast bulk of the film is not what happened. The main character, "adult Pi" has survived the ordeal that he revealed in his *2nd* explanation to the Japanese transport investigators. The ship went down, he got onto the boat, along with his mom, the cook, and one other identified crew member.
After a time the cook killed both his mom and the other crew member, and partially ate one or both. The younger Pi killed the cook. He then likely ate the cook or the crew member the cook had killed, but hopefully not his mom. There was not tiger (this is Pi), hyena (the cook), orangutan (his mom), or zebra (other crew member) on the boat. They were allegorical personifications that Pi, as he grew to adulthood, created in order to live at peace with himself. As a result, we can see the adult Pi as a whimsical, happy, and cheerful--even charming--man.
The reveal aspect of the fascination with multiple religions has no bearing on the theme: it is merely colorful character development, similar to his first name, "Pi" (being derived from a swimming pool in France ("piscine") where his uncle had competed, and shortened to "Pi" based on a recitation of the mathematical constant, pi). There is nothing theological or metaphysical about the theme. It is the story of survival under the most extreme and degrading conditions, and the psychological mechanisms that allow personal redemption of sorts. Thematically, it is much closer to Sophie's Choice or The Pianist than the way it appears superficially on screen and in the way it was marketed--akin to Forrest Gump.
There is context internal to the narration that support this interpretation, and in some ways the film almost *tells* you that this is so. At one point, Pi, himself, tells the author that he was the tiger.
So in this view, the story is of brutal survival, followed by years of constructing a narrative that rationalizes that part of Pi's life, and allows him to live normally and happily.
...and *that* is a remarkably powerful message in itself.
If you go back and deconstruct the film narrative in this light, it shows a brilliant and masterful job of both story adaptation and of creating the film narrative, itself. On top of that, it has some truly beautiful Hollywood bells-and-whistles added to enhance the dreamlike parts of the constructed rationalization.