Ang
Lee had the expectation barometer rising since the day he announced Life of Pi which had had a major impact
in the literary world. Stories on the film’s Indian connection have been
filling tabloids for the past few months. The dominant image the publicity and
promotional stills and movies widely circulated is that of a Royal Bengal Tiger
perched on a boat in the middle of the ocean with Pi as company. The tiger had
already become the unique selling point of the film; and when in the end he
selfishly walks away into the forest and gets lost in his elements, you would
know that it is not without reason that the tiger had stolen the limelight in
the promos. Apart from the tiger, it is the wonders of the natural world exaggerated
through spectacular visuals and enhanced by the 3-D effects is what keeps the
film going. However, a film also needs to have a narrative, or else tuning into
National Geographic or Animal Planet could have served the purpose.
Perhaps, Lee wanted to merge National
Geographic- or Animal Planet-style documentary with a narrative of survival
against apparently insurmountable odds. The film gets reduced into a boring
discourse on self-motivation which might serve as an inspirational visual text,
for, say, overworked corporate slaves. The film should and certainly would find
place in Masters in Business Administration syllabus. The natural odds Pi
fights against might acquire allegorical meaning in an MBA course, where the
students are programmed to put up with the merciless demands of late capitalist
economy. But the major problem of the film is that the director has spent so
much brain and bucks on the form that he has given the content little or no
importance. Although Pi’s interaction with Richard Parker or Orange Juice and
his thrill at the beauty of oceanic life under the star-spangled firmament send
ripples down your spine and touch your heart, the will to live on which is the
driving force of the book fails to inspire. What is fatalistic is that it is
difficult to establish an emotional connect with Pi. The book which runs two parallel
narratives simultaneously and leaves it to the reader to pick his own is more
interesting for truth and fiction jostle against each other, where it is
difficult to tell one from the other. The narrative puzzle and the suspicion
about storytelling which the book so effortlessly generates gets completely
lost in the film.
Life
of Pi connects the elements, but lacks in the emotional quotient. Man’s
relation with nature is explored to the utmost, but, the problem is every time
nature puts man through a wild test or when man wins over nature, the audience
does not feel for Pi’s triumph. What could have become a metonymic text of the history of human civilization, remains more of an individual's story. At the same time, Pi's unwavering tenacity to stay 'human' reiterates the nineteenth century romantic confidence in human rationality, celebrated by several European novelists, from Defoe to Stevenson. Life of Pi does not delve into the dark recesses of the human mind like Apocalypse Now or Lord of the Flies. I cannot tell whether all stories of exile and shipwreck should attempt similar psychoanalytic exploration of the human soul, but I found Life of Pi far too simplistic. Above all, the technical brilliance unfortunately devours
what should have been the soul of the film.
The film’s music, cinematography and
above all, the visual effects would fetch it several nominations at the Academy
Awards this year. Apart from that the film is a mere average work of art. And
yes, as I said at the very outset, the tiger deserves special mention for an
awesome performance.
Image Courtesy:
spinoff.comicbookresources.com
