Life of Pi

Ang Lee

2012

Oh, Irrfan Khan. I guess the first time I saw you must have been your wordless (near-wordless?), devastating performance in The Darjeeling Limited. Looking at your acting credits, that must be it, even though you’ve had a long career. One question for you: would you mind being in all movies? I think that would make all movies better if you were in them.

For once, I regret that I didn’t see this in 3-D. It’s so beautiful, and even 3-D skeptics and haters like myself have raved about the 3-D in this. So I wish I’d seen what the fuss was about.

But still, this is gorgeous. I see that Life of Pi is up for a mess of Oscars, and I don’t really have a problem with that at all. I think it’s interesting that it’s up for so many, but none of them are acting awards. Hmm.

I didn’t read the book, and *literally* all I knew about it going in is that there was a guy in a boat with a tiger, and I sort of pieced together that it’s kind of got some pop philosophy and/or religion, but that’s really all. I wonder, after seeing the movie, if maybe the book has more of the religious stuff, because I didn’t really feel that side of it during the movie, despite the fact that they said the word “God” a few times.

I also wonder about how the “reveal” is, um, revealed in the book– my experience of it went like this: “Man, they sure are spending a whole lot of time letting this kid tell those Japanese guys a fake story. This is weird, they’re spending a lot of time on this. Oh. Shit. He’s actually telling the truth now. Whoa.” Is that a testament to everything that came before, that I was so willing to believe the original story, that the kid was on a small boat with a tiger and all that other stuff more than I was willing to believe that horrible story that comes at the end?

I don’t know. I know there were things here that made my eyes very, very happy. I know I’ve never seen a fake tiger look so real. I knew Gérard Depardieu had to be more important than just being a surly fat cook, but I couldn’t have imagined how that turned out to be true.