BEFORE: Well, I said at the start of this year that the only true way for me to catch up would be to see more films in the theater. With the Oscar race on, my boss and co-worker are on a quest to see as many of the Best Picture nominees as they can, and I figure I'd like to see more than just one, so I joined them. Given a choice of this film or "Zero Dark Thirty", I felt this one was more in line with my chain. I may be the first person to draw a connection between "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked" and "Life of Pi".
You see it too, right? Humans and CGI animals, marooned after an accident at sea, forced to work together to get back to society. Hollywood's always riffing off the same themes - like with "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon", and "Red Planet" and "Mission to Mars". OK, maybe those pairs were a little closer than these two. And maybe there's no real connection here, I won't know until I see the film.
And yes, this is my second film today. The problem with adding in an extra film is that my schedule would have to shift, and then the month won't end where I want it to. But since I'll be away for two weeks in April (on a cruise where, hopefully, lifeboats won't be needed) adding an extra film to the January line-up won't matter by then.
I don't know if I'll be able to work any other Oscar-nominated films into my chain. I'm doing romance again in February, I'd work in "Silver Linings Playbook", but it looks too much like "The Blind Side", so I don't know if I want to see it. Then I'm going to cover politics, so "Lincoln" could fit in nicely. But "Argo"? "Django Unchained"? They might have to wait.
THE PLOT: A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor ... a fearsome Bengal tiger.
AFTER: I'm not sure what this could possibly be a follow-up to - "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Madagascar"? Let's just call this its own thing...
This is a story told in flashback, which in itself presents a problem. A fatal flaw in the framing, since if we know from the start that the narrator survives the experience, a great deal of the danger and suspense is thus dissipated. But it's the HOW that's important. Also, the only thing worse than a main character who IS a writer is a main character telling his story TO a writer. Either way, you just know that it's going to end with the writer saying, "Hey, this story would make a great book, which might someday become a movie..."
I was reminded of two things - one was that old children's puzzle about getting across a river in a boat while trying to transport a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain. And you can't leave the fox alone with the chicken, or the chicken with the grain, and you can't fit more than two items in the boat with you. Because life often presents you with challenges such as these, so you'd best be ready and figure them out in advance. The other is a Fox show from a few years ago, called "Man vs. Beast". They made an Olympic athlete run a footrace against a zebra, and they put the (then) champion of hot dog eating, Takeru Kobayashi, up against a very hungry bear. No contest, the bear won hands down, being nature's perfect eating machine - and then the bear looked over at Kobayashi and roared, as if to say, "Now, do I get to eat him as well? He is, after all, filled with hot dogs!"
After all, bears are vicious animals, and in the end not as cute as they appear (have you seen the internet pictures of the German bears that have lost their fur? They're quite ugly - go ahead, take a look, I'll wait...see what I mean?) Which brings me back to tigers, similar killing/eating machines. And not something you'd want to share a lifeboat with, or any confined space, for that matter.
So Pi relates his story about sharing a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker (long story) and a few other animals temporarily (think about it...) as an explanation of how he met God. Which is a bit strange, because I didn't see God, and I was keeping an eye out for him. Pi is a born Hindu who also practiced Christianity and flirted with Islam as well. Plus, he's a vegetarian. In order to share a boat with a tiger, they had to come to an understanding, to the extent that one can come to an understanding with a tiger. Also, a quick course in nautical survival techniques came in handy.
I've lived most of my life with cats, including the best one ever, who was an indoor cat from day one. But right now we share space with two former strays, and they never completely lose that last bit of wild. One can turn bitey at random times, so I can never completely let down my guard. So I feel there are some things the movie gets right about sharing space with animals. The two cats are separated in the house, for the same reason you can't put the fox in the boat with the chicken.
But animals can be trained, even cats to some extent. But they think in very basic terms, and they don't have morals about right and wrong, not like we do anyway. And killing is something that is done out of necessity, and they don't feel the kind of remorse that we do. It becomes a simple truth that doesn't get complicated by metaphor or the grand meaning of it all.
There's a feeling here that this story is all just a metaphor, but for what? Aren't we all just Hindu teens adrift in the lifeboat of faith on the sea of uncertainty, trying to feed the hungry tiger? Aren't we? Well, no, I don't think so. But it's annoying to be so close to understanding something and then falling short. I'm open to the possibility that, as with "The Cat in the Hat", the giant cat is nothing but a delusion in the mind of a troubled child, created for the purpose of keeping the dreamer alert and alive. But you be the judge.
There's a last-minute storytelling switch that suggests that NOTHING we've seen may have really happened (No duh, it's a movie...) and that something very different did, which is like pulling the narrative rug out from under our feet. But the point made at the end is that Pi's story is so fantastic, and people needed his story to make sense and be more understandable - so why doesn't the movie take its own advice? (So...the tiger is God? The tiger is Death? The tiger is Pi? Throw me a bone, here!)
Some people who endure traumatic events wonder why they survived, and others didn't. In their search for meaning, they often talk about "God's plan". They didn't die, there must be a reason, so clearly God has a plan for them, and I think that the logic here is a bit faulty. Remove God from the equation, and the person might feel instead like they were lucky or have cheated death, so concurrently they're living in the bonus round, and can go on to do whatever they want, make the most of what time they have left. I'm not saying one's right and the other's wrong.
But if God is everywhere, then why do people go on pilgrimages, or go to church for that matter? What gives humans the right to determine which creatures are pets and which ones are food? And for our pets, what gives us the right to determine when they're too old or sick to continue living? I'm left with a lot of questions and few answers, but at least I appreciate the movie sparking some debate. Now I'm going to check the message boards to find out what this film really "means".
Since I work at a job which is adjacent to the world of advertising, I'm sure people from ad agencies call all the time and say, "We need a realistic-looking tiger who talks to sell gum," or "We want a cel-animated tiger who breakdances to sell pickles." It's kind of refreshing to know there was probably a conversation making this film where someone wanted a CGI tiger who just looked and acted like a tiger, and in fact would be the most tiger-ey tiger possible.
Starring Irrfan Khan (last seen in "New York, I Love You"), Rafe Spall (last seen in "Anonymous"), Suraj Sharma, with a cameo from Gerard Depardieu.
RATING: 7 out of 10 lifejackets
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