Life Of Pi is the feel good type of film, made to please, but with an utterly vacuous message.
The film follows the story of a young boy who grew up in India raising animals in a zoo with his family. His dad is offered a new job in Canada and so they set out in a great ocean liner to the new world. During the trip a massive storm capsizes the boat and Pi (the protagonists name) finds refuge on a bright, white rescue boat with a zebra, a tiger and a hyena. Days pass and Pi must learn to cope with the wild animals on board. It comes down to just him and the tiger.
Life of Pi consists of various pernicious ideologies that boggle the mind. First up: religious relativism. This insidious idea has been around for a while now. Somehow people think that due to a poor history of war, a multitude of disagreements and other atrocities etc, that these days all religions should be on equal footing and that one is no better than another, or worse still, that there is no conflict between them. They are all just viewpoints on how to live. It's as taboo to criticize anyones religious views as it would be to question their cultural heritage. In point of fact, because religion, in many societies, is so enmeshed in their daily life and culture they will likely take offense from any disapproval. Anyway, Life of Pi blatantly embraces this nonsense. I call it that because all world religions have some aspects in common but all have fundamentally conflicting dogmas that have contributed to a long terrible history, up to the present day, with no sign of consillience. For this reason alone, I hated this movie.
Next we have the inconceivable zoological characterizations. In real life no one would have tried to survive with an effing feral tiger on board a small boat. I would have killed and ate that sucker right away and I'm more or less a vegetarian! I appreciate the idea that the conflict kept him alive but when the truth comes out at the end, the whole external, made inner, conflict becomes bogus anyway. The animals were anthropomorphized with human like actions and feeling even though you were sometimes confused by the moments of seeming animal veracity like, for instance, when the tiger wont look back at him in the end because animals 'don't care'. We are left with this mish mash of post modernistic mumbo jumbo and fallacious casuistry. The film is beautiful at moments, has a surprise ending and much to contemplate, though, only if you are ignorant of the world at large and intellectually dishonest. Most people will love this film but I submit that the ideas put forth are deleterious to the common man and more generally to our own inner animal. I can't get past my subjective mind on this one. I love Ang Lee but you can throw this one out with the seawater.
Conned by 3D once again—don't waste the money.
Recommended Viewing: The Beach - Brokeback Mountain - Cast Away
Bob Scale: The Critic: 7.5 - The Fan: 1.5
MetaCritic: 79
Rotten Tomatoes: 87
IMDB: 8.4
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