Ang Lee’s New Tiger: “Life of Pi” (2012)

Life of Pi as directed by Ang Lee almost did not happen. The project, ever since its 2003 inception, had been passed on by three directing heavyweights (M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet) before it landed in Lee’s lap in 2009. For some time, many doubted if Lee, Oscar-winning Taiwanese-born director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, and Lust, Caution, was the right choice for this idiosyncratic Indian tale about a young boy stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. All doubts can be put to rest, now that it is more than apparent Lee has made cinematic history with this new entry.

The Yann Martel novel on which the movie is based needs no introduction. Since its publication in 2001 and its winning of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year, the wildly imaginative story that works like some ancient folklore has entered our collective cultural consciousness, transforming the way we perceive the relation between myth and religion. On paper, Life of Pi is intriguing. More than half the novel takes place in the Pacific, with only a boy and a tiger as its protagonists. Any director tackling the novel would immediately be confronted with one obvious problem: how can a movie of 127 minutes be made based on such a skeletal plot?

Ang Lee’s approach is admirably simple; he remains faithful to the novel’s uncomplicated structure, endearingly so, choosing to let the images do the “talking.” In this department he is aided by state-of-the-art CGI, the likes of which have not been seen since James Cameron’s Avatar. But unlike the Whoa! experience in Cameron’s sci-fi tour de force, the presence of CGI here evokes a different kind of emotion in the viewer: an introspective, near-religious awe that complements the tale’s theme. Even some of the more rambunctious pieces, such as the capsizing of the Tsimtsum and the mania of the flying fish, are rendered with a dream-like quality. When it is used in more subdued sequences (the lunging of the whale out of plankton-riddled waters comes to mind), the experience is almost otherworldly. For those who are already familiar with Lee’s oeuvre, it is easy to see how he manages to pull off such a stunt. Renowned for his minimalist dialogue and “mood pieces” (there are not that many directors, Western or Asian, who can portray the subjugation of emotions in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility as effectively as Lee did), Lee more often than not eschews the Whoa! effect, settling instead for drawn-out dramatic scenes where the viewer is gently invited to do the thinking for himself.

The twist finale (the chief reason for Shyamalan turning down the project, fearing he would forever be associated with surprise endings) is nothing new to viewers who know the novel. What this viewer was curious about instead was how Lee was going to deliver the emotional punch when the “truth” about Pi’s marine experience came to light. Hollywood directors (with perhaps the exception of Clint Eastwood) are never averse to wringing tears out of their viewers, but not so Lee. The final confessional segment – with its overlapping of young and adult Pi – is a testament to Lee’s ability to tone down supersized emotions and still manage to hit the viewer full-on in the guts. Credit, of course, will have to be given to the two leads: Suraj Sharma (new kid in town) and Irrfan Khan (Bollywood veteran).   

For those of us who know how the movie is going to end, we feel a tug at our heartstrings when Pi arrives at the too-good-to-be-true mangrove island. We know then that Pi can never choose to remain there if he is to learn to live again. We understand that every great cinematic experience must come to an end, and it is with sadness in our hearts that we say goodbye to Richard Parker, who does not seem to realise how he has touched our lives in just 127 minutes.