As we touched on earlier with Avatar, one of the biggest themes over the last five years has been the reintroduction of 3D to the modern cinema audience. Although not every film fully utilised the medium those that did have to be admired for employing modern technology in such an impressive manner.
One of the films that successfully used 3D to its advantage was Ang Lee's Life of Pi, based on the so-thought unfilmable novel by Yann Martel. The Pi of the title is an Indian native living in Canada who narrates his story to a character known as 'the author' who in fact turns out to be Mantel himself. Although Pi tells Martel several stories from his youth, where he grew up in a zoo, the majority of the film's narrative is based around the journey his family took from India to Canada. During their time at sea, the boat they were on sunk and Pi got free alongside several of the animals. Lee's fantastic visual effects team perfectly captured these scenes, which in other people's hand could've felt quite trite. I feel it's also a testament to Lee as a director that he made the scenes of Pi at sea as engaging as they were. A good hour or so of the film is dedicated to Pi's journey back to land and the problems he had sharing a boat with the zoo's tiger who had been named Richard Parker. Although I never saw the film at the cinema myself, it's fair to say that those that did were treated to some fantastical 3D. Scenes of the night sky lit up by fireflies and an island inhabited by a thousand meerkats were just two of the highlights throughout the course of Life of Pi. The final scenes brought the film back to reality to an extent as Pi told Martel a shorter story about what realistically could've happened to him instead. Here the animals become people from the ship where Pi himself embodies the characteristics of Richard Parker, however there's a final little twist that apparently didn't appear in the book.
This was my second time watching Life of Pi and on both viewings I had the same sort of response. Visually the film is perfection and therefore I'm not surprised that the film was nominated in all of the technical categories at the Oscars. Lee's helming of the project earned him his second Best Director Oscar and I believe that this is more than well-deserved. Anybody who can make a film that contains an hour of nothing but a teenage boy, a tiger and a boat has to be applauded. The fact that this film is one of the most visually engaging in recent memory is just a testament to Lee's artistic vision. At the same time the narrative in Life of Pi is very slight and therefore at times it's hard to give it your full concentration. The majority of the story is packed into the first third of the film in which Pi narrates stories of his early life to Martel. After the shipwreck, Life of Pi becomes more of a survival film albeit one narrated by the protagonist himself. Of the cast I felt that Irrfan Khan did a great job at anchoring the piece as the adult Pi whilst Gerard Depardieu put in a memorable cameo as the ship's cook. However it was relative newcomer Suraj Sharma who deserves the most recognition as he gave a mesmerising turn as the teenage Pi. The fact that Sharma would've been working against a green screen for the majority of the production just proves to you what an accomplished performer he is. Ultimately Life of Pi exploits the visual medium of cinema for all its worth leaving you with many memorable scenes most notably those including the film's infamous tiger. However, I can't say I was gripped throughout the course of the film and could've done with a little more narrative meat to complement Life of Pi's outstanding ascetic charm.
Next time we look at two films that were nominated in the same year that dealt with the growing pains of two very different teenage girls.
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