Life of Pi

Release Date:  Nov 23,2012

Genre: Action / Drama

Producer: Ang Lee

Star Cast:  Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Suraj Sharma, Adi Hussian, Gerard Depardieu

Music Director: Mychael Danna

Everything looks beautiful in Life of Pi. The dangerous animals look beautiful. The terrible storms look beautiful. The crashing ocean waves, the twinkling stars, the wondrous carnivorous island on which the hero at one point lands — pure gorgeousness, shimmering with all the wow that superlative 3-D technology has to offer. An adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-seller about a 16-year-old Indian boy named Pi who survives a shipwreck and crosses the Pacific in a lifeboat. Pi does so alone — except for the temporary company of a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena, and the ongoing companionship of a Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Story starting in Pi’s younger years, focusing on his curiosity about  multiple religions – a practice which only exacerbates his pragmatic-minded father. Life takes a hard turn when Pi, as a young man (played by newcomer Suraj Sharma), is on a freighter with his family bound for America to sell their collection of zoo animals. When a freak storm sinks the ship, Pi escapes on a lifeboat with a small band of animal survivors in tow – including the fearsome tiger, “Richard Parker.” From there, the young man of many faiths must endure a trial of survival alongside his animal companions, learning many things about God and faith along the way.

The rest of the cast is mostly inconsequential, including Gerard Depardieu in a fleeting role as a cruel ship’s cook. The other people in Pi’s life are filtered through this unusual youth’s eyes, each of them catalysts in the development of his deep spirituality, which blends Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and other contradictory influences into a weirdly cohesive form of humanism.

Pi’s story may not, as one character states, make you believe in God. But you may leave the theater more open to the possibilities of higher things in the life of Pi, and in your own.