I just saw Life of Pi in the theatres last night with my fiancé and loved it.
I loved the visuals – the colours were bright and lush without being cloying. The score (which I’m listening to as I write this) was absolutely delightful, and provided the perfect accompaniment to the images on the screen; where those were grand and sweeping, the music was intimate and tender. I love movie scores, but the only one I can think of that so enhanced the in-theatre experience was the one for The Fountain – another movie that asks big questions and has trippy visuals.
I also appreciated how faithful it remained to the book. Unlike Les Mis, which was hampered by slavishly following the musical, or The Hobbit, which made the Tolkien purist in me cringe, Life of Pi preserved the integrity of its source material while still adhering to the rules of film narrative. The only divergence I found jarring was the addition of the Obligatory Love Interest to Pi’s life before he leaves India.
Instead, the biggest difference between the two versions is one of tone. The novel had a deep vein of playfulness and meta-humour. In many cases in the book, you could see author Yann Martel winking at the reader between the lines, like when Pi says he can tell his story in 100 chapters – precisely the number of chapters in the book.
In contrast, Ang Lee plays it straight. Gone are the playful pokes at choosing between reason (Satish Kumar the Communist science teacher) and faith (Satish Kumar the religious baker). In the movie, these two poles of belief are predictably but sincerely replaced by Pi’s parents.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that sincerity is the hallmark of Ang Lee’s directorial style. His movies contain a lot of artifice, but they don’t wink at you. They don’t try to make you think that he’s being clever by inserting references to other movies, or encourage you to engage with him in a mutual feeling of superiority over the film’s protagonists. Instead, his films say “this happened, take it or leave it.”
Life of Pi is a film I’ll gladly take.
Many others have commented about the cutesy nature of the ending, in which Pi gives another, more brutal explanation for what happened after the ship sunk, and asks his audience to state which version they prefer. Most dismiss it as a stereotypical attempt to validate the Power of Storytelling. However, this ending is native to the book.
More importantly, I think it’s necessary because of the nature of the book’s framing device: Pi is telling this story to the author, and has told it in the past to the representatives of the Japanese shipping company – of course they aren’t going to believe him! But if it were told completely straight, without these people acting as surrogates for us, something would be lost. It is because we see Pi as an adult, and see how well he has adjusted to the world despite the horrors he has faced, that we are willing to accept the whimsy of a tiger in a lifeboat.
I think my enjoyment of book-to-film adaptations depends on which version I encounter first. As I mentioned in my review of the first Hunger Games movie, I was disappointed by its shallow exploration of some of the book’s most important themes. In contrast, while I like Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, I absolutely love the movie version, which I saw before I read the book.
As an interesting hybrid of seeing the movie before reading the book or vice versa, I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in the theatres, and then read the entire trilogy before The Two Towers was released. That, in addition to watching all of the special features on the LoTR DVDs, makes me understand and respect the changes that Jackson & co. made on the way to the big screen. However, I read The Hobbit when I was 10, and the idea of the same group of people turning it into a goddamned trilogy horrifies me.
Does this mean I’m unimaginative? I don’t know. But I do think that the rules of narrative are different between book and screen. The Hobbit is very conventional and film-friendly in comparison to The Lord of The Rings, so it made sense to drastically alter the latter books to make them fit on screen. Life of Pi was already a very visual book with a clear throughline (I’m confused by the idea that so many people thought it unfilmable), so I’m happy with its transition from one medium to another.
What about you? What did or didn’t work about this movie? What book-to-film adaptations do you love or hate?
Hi Christina, Congratulations on being engaged! Here is your spirited response. I just read your post and I don’t think I could disagree more with your thoughts on this film.
The Life of Pi is a dishonest story about an inert character rationalized with a trite “people believe what they want to believe” theme as a pseudo-profound proof of faith and God. Very few works of art anger me but this did in so many different ways.
ORIENTALISM & THE MAGIC ASIAN
One of the more off-putting aspects of The Life of Pi is the author’s use of what I call “the magic Asian” trope. In this case, our main character is South Asian for seemingly no other reason other than his background and homeland would be a more spiritually-appropriate context to justify the ending’s reveal. The stereotype of “Indian people = spiritual people” is further reinforced in the film. The fawning journalist’s constant use of tbe honorific made the scenes in the older Pi’s residence seem like an audience with a guru. Certainly, the actor portraying the elder Pi plays it this way.
FILM & BOOKS
Thanks for pointing out the differences between the book and film. As others who have read the book and seen the film commented, it is a faithful adaptation. It’s interesting you bring up book-to-film adaptations. I think the meta problem with the film is Ang Lee and his screenwriter’s attempts to be faithful to the book. Each medium has specific qualities that demand adaptation in either direction should be unfaithful. As an example, the principal is illustrated in film-or-TV-to-book adaptations, common reading for any SF/horror genre fan.
Great films have been made from not-so-great books. For example, The Godfather was a trashy mob bestseller before it was transformed into the film it’s known as now. I’m a fan of the Lord of the Rings and the Narnia/Cosmic Trilogy books. Tolkien was not as good a writer as his friend Lewis. The Peter Jackson films are an enormous improvement on the novels which are long on explanation and exposition and short on emotional engagement.
Regarding The Hobbit, it’s known it was an exercise in preparation for the writing of Lord of the Rings. It’s also known that Tolkien had planned to extensively rewrite the slim volume. The enormous amounts of story information for The Hobbit reside in an extensive footnote by Tolkien within The Return of the King. This is what is being used to expand what was already a planned two-part film into a trilogy. The pantomime shock of critical response to this news is funny because:
A) The use of Tolkien’s footnotes was widely-reported at the time.
B) It illustrates a viewpoint to “preserve” some vague purity related to the fact the novel is a single volume. These are films, not books.
FILM VS. BOOKS
As a visual medium, film plays upon the inherent frission between the audience’s knowledge that “it’s only a movie” and the naturally immersive nature of the medium. Well-written and inventively-filmed works only heighten the immersive quality.
The twist at the end of The Life of Pi would have been more palatable had the tale been posited from the start as only one possibility. There are examples in film history that successfully illustrate how this can be done (e.g., Rashomon, Momento). As it is, the reveal is a ridiculously arcane story device and is akin to introducing a new character at the end of a mystery who did it or having everything that previously occurred be a dream. What is more ludicrous is the notion it’s somehow profound. I’d say the story displays a serious lack of understanding regarding the nature of faith and the perception of God in order to make grand claims that “believing what one wants to believe” will help readers and viewers “believe in God”.
My opinion is coloured by the fact I know people who have gone through harrowing experiences. There is truth to visualizing something more pleasant in order to deal with an awful reality. But those who do so don’t equate “fooling myself” with perceiving the divine.
VISUALS & VISUAL STORYTELLING
Pi is not a very interesting character because he doesn’t develop throughout the story.
– He is not fearful of animals as illustrated by the incident at the zoo with the tiger as a young boy
– He is already spiritually voracious and a believer in God as shown by his interest in theistic religions. I think it would have been very interesting had the story shown Pi’s interest in a non-theistic religion (i.e., Buddhism).
So where does this character go in order to sustain a 2+ hour film? Throughout, I kept wondering why does he try to continue surviving? While I consider Tom Hank’s Cast Away a poor film for a number of reasons, it made sense when his character considered suicide. But Pi keeps going on with no reason other than the story dictates he must in order to impart his wisdom at the end. I was completely disengaged in his non-struggle. When the tiger simply wanders off near the end of the film, the camera lingers on the spot in the jungle attempting to wring some emotional longing for the loss of another blank character.
For all it’s trappings as a spiritual journey, the film is merely a CGI travelogue. This happens, then this and then this. Any development occurs in voiceover narration, a lazy shortcut to tell rather than show the audience what is occuring in the story.
As a film, The Life of Pi is an excellent example of an empty spectacle. While the visuals are certainly lovely to behold they are merely “meaning-esque”. Ideas or concepts are not so much illustrated or supported but simply presented as meaningful. It’s just supposed to be profound when the whale breaches to eat jellyfish.
There were odd visual choices made. Does Pi really remember his uncle as a greased-hair, painted-mustache-wearing Victorian circus muscleman from many a painted sign in India? I can’t help but feel this is based on cultural tourism. I have my doubts a South Asian filmmaker would portray someone from this time period in this way.
PLOT POINTS
Once the film ended it was clear Pi’s meaningless backstory was shown because it’s meant to function as the metaphorical context for the reveal. But further thoughts on this seem to indicate it’s an incoherant metaphor:
– If the animals in the lifeboat equate to individual survivors from the sinking, does this mean there were no animals and was he lying about his family owning a zoo?
– If so, are all his other illustrated remembrances (i.e., how he got his name, his uncle, etc.) fabrications too?
In the end, the film fails to answer how faith relates to lying to an audience (i.e., the viewer, the insurance investigators, reporter) in the telling of a tale and believing what one wishes for the storyteller. Instead it lazily relies on the “you know what I’m talking about” approach by having the characters nod knowingly to each other while the audience nods along. That is so deep, right?
The Life of Pi was this year’s Eat, Pray, Love. I am not looking forward to the next film of a novel based upon a profound journey.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the comment! It’s good to hear from you. I agree with a lot of your criticisms, but do have some comments of my own to add.
ORIENTALISM AND MAGIC ASIANS
I do agree that there are strong overtones of that here, but I also want to let you know about the context in which I first read Life of Pi.
I was in my final year of high school, and was taking a course on CanLit. This meant I was exposed to a lot of the typical fixtures of Canadian Literature(read: mostly white authors, mostly white protagonists). You know – Margaret Atwood and Margaret Lawrence, Robertson Davies, Nino Ricci, etc. Michael Ondaatje isn’t white, but almost all of the characters in The English Patient were.
To have Life of Pi come along felt like a fresh breath of air in comparison. Imagine! No overly-twee academic talk like Davies! No repressed Catholic guilt like in Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints! And although Life of Pi did have the de-rigeur “man vs environment” plot that forms the backbone of CanLit, at least it was in a type of environment that was new to the establishment – not another godforsaken tundra or forest.
So in that sense, of it being different from all of the other CanLit books I read (but still approved by the teacher), it felt really welcome.
Does this excuse the orientalism? You’re right in that it doesn’t.
But I find it funny that this issue struck you so deeply considering your strong endorsement to me of “The Talisman” by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Like many of King’s stories (The Green Mile, The Stand, etc), The Talisman has a HUGE case of Magical Negro syndrome, and I put the book down because of this.
It surprises me that you pick up on the “magical minority” stereotype so keenly here – at least in Life of Pi, Pi was the main character, instead of a supporting one meant to help out the Special White Kid.
FILMS VS BOOKS
I think my main concern is whether the book stays true to the source material – if not, it had better have damn good reasons for doing so. The book is puckish and has a very meta/clever style of writing, but I honestly don’t know how this would have transferred over to the movie without making it condescending towards the audience. On the other hand, I think that the frame story really needs to be there – with all of the problems of “not facing up to reality” that that implies. I’m not sure how to square the circle here.
THE HOBBIT/LORD OF THE RINGS
I agree that Tolkien is not the greatest prose stylist. To me, his strengths lie in his worldbuilding. I love the geneologies, for example.
Speaking as a person who uses the Return of the King and its associated appendices as bathroom reading (seriously), I am well aware of how much of The Hobbit’s back story lies in the appendices. However, much of the lore that Jackson & Co inserted into the new Hobbit movie has NO basis in the books at all.
Some of it is simple stuff, like replacing Bolg with Azog, his father. Other stuff is far more egregious, like:
– The idea that Thror considered the discovery and possession of The Arkenstone to be a sign of divine approval of his rule. Very little is explained of Dwarven religion, but I find the idea of dwarves craving divine approval to be completely unfounded in what I’ve read of the lore.
– The idea that Bilbo Baggins didn’t know who Gandalf was when he showed up at Bilbo’s door is a complete fabrication. In the books, the two were friends for many years beforehand, and in fact, the whole expedition to the Lonely Mountain turned out to be a coincidence: Gandalf was already on his way to visit Bilbo when he met up with Thorin by accident in Bree. The question of what to do with Smaug was already on Gandalf’s mind – it was only his meeting with Thorin that crystallized his resolve to do something about it.
VISUALS/STORYTELLING
I saw the movie in 3D, which tends to wash out the colour of any movie. The colours – which were rich, without becoming all saturated and candy-coloured – held up really well despite the 3D glasses. That was one of the things that impressed me. Especially that shot of the boat floating on an ocean during a starry night, where you cant tell where the sky ends and the ocean begins.
You consider the use of voiceover to be a lazy narrative shortcut. What other options would there have been though to illustrate Pi’s thought processes? Having him narrate out his thoughts as he’s writing them in the notebook is just another type of voiceover, while having him talk out loud to himself would only work if it were being played as a symptom of delirium.
As for his uncle, I honestly don’t remember how he was described in the book, but I’ll agree with you in that it is kind of cultural-touristy.
PLOT
I think that stating that Pi was lying the whole time about his family/origins is just throwing out the baby with the bathwater. He may have reason to lie about the occupants of the lifeboat to protect his fragile psyche, but what would be his motivation for lying about his entire childhood? Wouldn’t it make more sense to patch together pieces of the pre-existing truth in order for the idea about there being animals in the lifeboat to ring true?
As to your final comment, alas, I have not seen Eat, Pray, Love. I don’t really want to, either.
Finally, to top this all off, have you ever heard of the blog “Requires Only That You Hate”? You’ll probably like a lot of the cultural criticism of SF/F that goes on over there: http://requireshate.wordpress.com/
ORIENTALISM AND MAGIC ASIANS
Regarding The Talisman, I had totally forgotten that character. You’re absolutely right. It has been some time since I read the book. My memory is fixated on the imaginative descriptions of the Blasted Lands and of course Wolf. I’m not sure why you would allow the presence of such a character to prevent you from reading the book. I don’t doubt that it might offend anyone but I hope it isn’t sympathetic offence (aka White Guilt). This issue hits home for me because it’s a stereotype of my ethnicity. I’m not necessarily offended, just disappointed that it’s still effective enough to not be perceived by those handing out awards or purchasing books. Racial perception politics especially among Asians is evaporating to a certain degree because younger generations do not see the difference that was tangible 35 years ago. We’ve reached a point over the past 20 years where wily members of visible minorities are themselves trading on this trope for fun and profit (e.g., Chopra).
My issue is a white writer uses the context of India and an Indian protagonist simply to make the reveal more palatable. Imagine if our hero was a nationality without the associated contemplative religious history stretching over thousands of years. How would the reveal go over then? That said, I’m not against an author of any background writing any nationality, gender or sexual orientation. I just think the motives of this author are plain to see and somewhat cynical.
THE HOBBIT/LORD OF THE RINGS
Sorry but I will affectionately call you out as a Tolkien nerd! And it doesn’t matter that some of the inserted material doesn’t have Tolkien as its source! The filmmaker’s brief is to engage the viewer emotionally. Film is an emotional medium. The choice to expand and reframe Arwen’s role for the LOTR films was made mainly for these reasons. Using your example, dwarves and their relationship to divinity would only be important to maintain only if the detail manifests in a specific character motivation/decision.
The issue of whether or not Gandalf and Bilbo know each other is irrelevant. In a book, it’s an easy sentence to write to give the impression this is but one of many stories from a land with a long history. For the purpose of a film, it’s more momentous to do what they did.
VISUALS/STORYTELLING
Voiceover narration not only breaks the rule to show not tell, it’s also has the effect of distancing the viewer from what is being shown. Life of Pi was a very passive experience. The audience kept being told what to think and feel rather than being allowed to experience what Pi was going through.
What could the filmmakers have done? How about challenge the actor to act out how Pi came to these revelations without words? Allow the audience to apprehend, digest and understand the performance and the message being conveyed. The actor’s job is to find and codify a character’s language of movement in order to use it to indicate aspects of their persona. (It’s very interesting to watch films from the ’40s for the body language of another time) If they had done this, the film would have needed to center around Pi rather than the fabulous fake seascapes and creatures. The visual medium of film approaches the sophistication of the written word when it uses its strengths to tell the story.
PLOT
Your reply sounds a little like a justification. When I mention the Pi’s lying, I’m not in the least bit concerned about his motivation. It’s an incoherant metaphor that calls into question everything the film has depicted. If this were Rashomon (a classic 1950 Akira Kurosawa film that is the basis for multiple viewpoint film structures), it would be known that we are seeing one version of some chain of events from the beginning. Fantastical deviations would immediately call attention to themselves and the purpose of the story is to understand the reasons for such deviations between each iteration of the story. The audience is allowed to conclude what is the truth among the versions.
Pi uses incessant documentary-style narration over the entire film and then blindsides the audience with a reveal that is in the realm of a betrayal to anyone who invested emotionally in the character over the previous 2 hours. A reader or viewer only wants to see what happens next if there is some emotional or psychological weight to the events. Imagine if a book begins by stating “everything you will read in the next 300 pages will actually prove to have no consequence to the main character”.
Thanks for the link to “Requires Only That You Hate”. I had never heard of it and will check it out.
Almost forgot to mention: my sympathies for having to read all that boring CanLit. I was mostly spared since I went to an alternative school. My favourite was Ondaatje but only his angry-young-man poetry. Lawrence is OK but the love some readers have for Atwood’s high-school-level revelations is truly puzzling!