Life of Pi: The Boy And The Tiger

It's been a while since I've been absolutely breath-taken away by a movie as I was just recently by the Ang Lee's latest story about the boy and the tiger - Life of Pi.

Surprising enough, I actually knew about this movie way before it has opened in USA. The film critics from around the world were raving about this film-story for months, including the fact that the film got Academy Award 11 nominations: Best Picture, Best Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Film Editing and Visual Effects! Should I say any more? The anticipation of the film has been, definitely, built by the time it arrived to the theaters in America and the world-wide recognition of the film speaks for itself.

Here's what I'm going to tell you, aside from the fact that I'm a very tough movie critic - Life of Pi is nothing you've might have ever seen before, and not because the story takes place on a boat in the Pacific on the open, where the boy and the tiger are seeking to save their lives from a terrible cargo-shipwreck and have to co-exist, but because the film was, actually, shot with the real animals - not the computer-generated images as we've now gotten used to to see in the movies. Of course, the director has used some of the image-enhancement, but only to make it a bit bigger and more impressive, but if you are a fan of the Discover Channel and Animal Planet - you'd know that the wild world looks and feels just as the film shows. Moreover, these shots is just a small drop of what the film is offering to the audience.

Life of Pi will take your breath away, literally! The more than two-hour long film would seem to you like five minutes. Here's why.

This story is one of its kind, because of the amazing work the cinematographers of the film did. They take us inside - in and under water - the nature of the animal-to-animal and animal-to-human interactions, which are absolutely amazingly and flawlessly executed.

The shots of the ocean life - the whales, the glittering jellyfish, the flying fish, the ocean storms, the sharks, the waives that come and go, and so on - keep on surprising the audience. If not just for those shots that are jaw-dropping, then, at least, for the interaction of the boy with the tiger makes this film hard to forget. I can guarantee to you that this film that would change many people's perception of the nature - the danger and unpredictability of it.

The film very well shows that everything about the wild nature is unpredictable and no animal could ever completely become your "friend" - it just doesn't work this way and the real life cases of how the trained animals attacked their masters and/or trainers prove this point.

Remember the chimpanzee Travis that in 2009 gained international notoriety after he suddenly attacked a friend of his owner, Charla Nash and grievously mauled her, blinding her while severing her nose, ears, both hands and severely lacerating her face?

Or, do you remember Roy Horn of the glitzy Las Vegas duo Siegfried & Roy, who was mauled onstage by one of the tigers in his show?

Or, the Russian circus star, Irina Bugrimova - one of the well known in the world among the famous circus trainers, who has been taming the most untamed tigers and lions for many years, and who not once but many times survived the attacks of the animals she was training. Once she was even attacked during the performance: one of the tigers broke her wrist, but she still was able to finish the performance and most of the audience didn't even know that she was severely hurt.

And these were the trained and tamed animals!
So, no wild animal can be a complete 'friend' to you and the Life of Pi director Ang Lee, who you might know by such movies as Lust, Caution, Brokeback Mountain, Hulk and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and who is one of my favorite directors - proved to us one more time not only that we should never feel too relaxed around the wild nature but also that no human being should impose on the wild nature. He shows it very well in the scene, when the young Pi (very well portrayed as an adult by the newcomer actor Suraj Sharma) sneaks to see the new addition to the family's zoo - the tiger - and tries to feed him with the raw meat off his hand to the horror of his father, who right there and then teaches him the lesson he'd never forget:

"Remember, the tigers are not your friends. They are wild animals. They'll never be your friends." 

Only later the boy understands what his father meant and appreciates the lesson his father gave him in  the childhood that helped him to deal with the tiger on the boat.

Personally, I've been drawn to the stories about the human to animal interactions. I've been a big fan of the Native American tale "The Boy and the Wolves" since I was a child. I've read and re-read it so many times. I was fascinated by the 'possibilities' that humans can co-exist with the wild animals world and that the wild life can be 'kind' to the human beings. But that was just a fairy tale, in real life - one way or another - we see that you can never be too safe around the wild animals, even if they are 'tamed'. As it was also shown in the recent French film Rust and Bone - another great movie must see - where the whale trainer looses her legs to the terrible accident, when one of the whales, instead of jumping out and back in the pool, jumped on the platform, where the trainers were standing.

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. Growing up in the family that owns a zoo, it's natural for him to be around the wild animals. When his family decides to take the animals to Canada to sell, they leave India in the new pursuit, however, the ship faces a sever storm and sinks.

The only human who survives the shipwreck is Pi. However, he doesn't end up to be on a lifeboat by himself. He ends up in a boat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all fighting for survival.

The film uses great visuals to show how Pi and Richard Parker survive 227 days after a shipwreck and what it takes to want to live. Their co-existence on the boat leads to many great new discoveries about the nature of a human and animal.

Without me giving away too many details, I'd strongly recommend to see it on a big screen (do not wait for the DVD release and/or computer versions). This film is meant to be seen on a big screen and, preferably  in 3D as I've seen it. The 3D totally enhances the journey - with the ocean waives 'splashing right in the audience'.

And one more thing - if you are a big fan of the cat's family - and even happen to have a cat - after seeing this movie, you'd have a whole new respect and appreciation of your feline.

See the trailer here: