Life of Pi

I could tell that "Life of Pi" was targeted at the type of audiences that went nuts for "Avatar". Because "Life of Pi" is fantasy instead of science fiction and due to competition from other films released at the same time, it probably won't have the same effect. The 3D on "Avatar" was much more impressive anyways. The story of Pi is a good one and the film is full of eye candy but the movie felt a tad cliché. It has sincerity but not quite enough for my taste. I could tell that the movie's focus was somewhat more on what we see on the screen instead of the story being told. Fortunately, Ang Lee did make some decisions that create drama and allow for inspiration.

One of my friends compared the movie to "Forrest Gump" while I would compare it to another Tom Hanks/Robert Zemeckis movie, "Cast Away". The difference is that those films, under Zemeckis's direction, felt more realistic and therefore allowed the audience to better relate to the main character. The opening credits of "Life of Pi" told me that the film's feature characteristics would be its design and 3D. The scenes in India or France did not feel as realistic as Montreal. There are possible story reasons for this but I feel they did not fully justify this inconsistency in realism. I did like the special effects shots during the Piscine Molitor scene. I did enjoy the depiction of Pi's back-story. It set up the main character in a decent way. I enjoy the humorous name for the tiger, Richard Parker, but I later learned that it is the name of many seamen both from reality and fiction that were involved in shipwrecks and cannibalism. There appears to be some foreshadowing being employed by the novelist and this is carried over into the feature film. I was enjoying the film until the aspect ratio changed during the flying fish scene. You can't make sudden changes like this in a movie unless it has a story purpose or the director does it constantly throughout the film such as on "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises". When you are telling a dramatic story on film, a director will almost always desire the audience to passively view the film as they follow the narrative unless they want the audience to actively interpret a message. The film is structured with the framing device of Pi telling his story to a writer and so we are under Pi's control as he relates his amazing tale. Ang Lee as the director is actually the master controller of this film but his guiding hand is invisible to the audience at first. That is not the case anymore when you get to the flying fish sequence because I suddenly became aware that I was watching a 3D film and my ability to accept the world I was watching was destroyed. Lee continued to have various shots in different aspect ratios and that is good because it would have been even worse to have only one scene different from all the rest. The biggest problem I have with the flying fish scene is that the aspect ratio change causes the 3D to take on the persona of a gimmick instead of a filmmaking tool. In Jerry Bruckheimer's 3D film "G-Force", the aspect ratio appears to 2:40:1 but it is actually 1:85:1. This is done to create the phony illusion that the special effects are spilling out of the frame and into the theater. Ang Lee did the same trick but not with the whole film. This kind of filmmaking is not worthy of Oscar winning directors in my opinion. The ending of the film is difficult for me to interpret but I am sure that is on purpose.

The casting of the film was really good in that unknowns were used. I did not remember Irrfan Khan from "Slumdog Millionaire" or "The Amazing Spider-Man" so that is good. His performance was really good. M. Night Shyamalan was going to direct "Life of Pi" but funny enough, he decided to direct "Lady in the Water" instead which did quite poorly. I trust Ang Lee more with this story I guess. This film was going to be released on Dec. 14, 2012 but then "The Hobbit" was announced for the same day. Moving the release a month earlier was very important because the film's audience would probably be very similar for both films. It would have been suicide for "Pi" to be released at any time in December of that year. Even with the film being released in November of 2012, it wasn't nearly as popular as "Avatar" as the filmmakers were hoping for. There was competition from "Skyfall" and part 2 of "Breaking Dawn".

I was so surprized when the film was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars because I don't believe it was that good. When Ang Lee won Best Director, that was the saddest news of the night because other directors (including some that were not nominated) deserved it more than he did. I even feel that James Cameron deserved a second Academy Award for directing more than Lee did. Sure Lee made an unfilmable film but he made some unprofessional aforemetioned decisions. One might ask how this film could win more Oscars than any other film made in 2012 including Best Director but not win Best Picture. I believe that because the focus of "Life of Pi" was on the visuals, it dug its own grave at the Academy Awards. As evidence, it won other Oscars for Cinematography, Musical Score and Visual Effects while "Argo" won for Editing and Adapted Screenplay. Those two awards that "Argo" won have to do with storytelling and that is why "Argo" also won Best Picture for 2012. I had a feeling that "Life of Pi" would win for Best Musical Score because it won the same award at the Golden Globes. I also knew it was going to win Best Visual Effects. While watching the film, I could not tell that the tiger was CGI and that is an impressive achievement. Some are saying that the use of 3D on "Life of Pi" is also on par with Martin Scorsese's "Hugo". I again disagree. While the 3D was impressive on "Pi", it stole focus from the story of the film. In addition, cinematic special effects were a large part of the story of "Hugo" because the movie is about the first special effects artist in filmmaking history. Some parts of "Life of Pi" were great and others were not. Even though both "Life of Pi" and "Avatar" lose much of their appeal when viewed in 2D, "Pi" looses more than "Avatar" does. "Avatar" is fun while "Pi" is dramatic in nature. By the way, this Ang Lee film had a crouching tiger but no hidden dragon (I like that film of his a lot more as well).

3 Stars