Movie Review

In English III

Submitted by:

Submitted to:

Keith Rouvinn R. Buri

Ms. Tejada

III-Dalton

(Teacher)

Film: Life of Pi

A. Introduction:
Characters:
Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, the film's protagonist
o Gautam Belur as Pi, age 5
o Ayush Tandon as Pi, age 11/12
o Suraj Sharma as Pi, age 16
o Irrfan Khan as Pi, adult
Rafe Spall as Yann Martel, the real-life Canadian novelist who wrote
this story.
Tabu as Gita Patel, Pi's mother
Adil Hussain as Santosh Patel, Pi's father
Ravi Patel, Pi's older brother:
o Ayan Khan as Ravi, age 7
o Mohamed Abbas Khaleeli as Ravi, age 13/14
o Vibish Sivakumar as Ravi, age 18/19
Gerard Dipardieu as the Cook
Po-Chieh Wang as the Sailor
Shravanthi Sainath as Anandi, Pi's teenage girlfriend
Andrea Di Stefano as the Priest
Elie Alouf as Francis "Mamaji", Pi's uncle
Richard Parker as the Bengal Tiger

Direction and Production:

Directed by Ang Lee
Produced by Fox 2000 Productions

Short Summary:
Life of Pi is a three part story of Piscine Molitor Patel, a sixteen- yearold South Indian boy who survives out at sea with a Bengal tiger for 227
days. Pi is raised in Pondicherry a Southern city in India, where his father
runs a zoo. At the age of fifteen he adopts three religions Hinduism,
Christianity, and Islam. Pi has been a Hindu from an early age, but
considers
himself
to
be
devoted
to
all
three
religions.
Due to commotion by the government that has been bugging Pis
father for quite some time, the Patel family decides to close the zoo and
move to Canada. At sixteen, Pi, his mother, father, brother, along with the
zoo animals all board the Tsimtsum (the animals are on the ship so they
can
be
sold
all
around
the
world).
An unknown reason causes the Tsimtsum to sink, and Pi is the only
person to make it onto a lifeboat and survive. The lifeboat including Pi
contains a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan, and Richard Parker a Bengal
tiger. As the journey continues most of the animals end up killing each
other, leaving pi and Richard Parker as the sole survivors left on the boat.
After struggling in the ocean Pi and Richard Parker landed on an
unknown island made up of algae with a large population of Meerkats.
There Richard Parker and Pi ate and drink to strengthen up theyre bodies
but as soon as night came an acidic reaction goes and digests the dead
fishes and Pi found a human tooth on a leaf and discovering the island is
carnivorous, Pi grabbed many Meerkats called Richard Parker and left as
soon
as
the
sun
came
up.

Richard Parker and Pi after quite some time end up on a Mexican

beach. As soon as they are on land Richard Parker immediately runs off
into the jungle, without even acknowledging Pi. Pi finds Richard Parker's
lack of delay deeply hurtful because they both experienced so much
together. Pi is then found, fed and bathed, and taken to a hospital. At the
hospital, two Japanese men come to question Pi on how the Tsimtsum
sank. Pi tells his story, which the men do not believe, so he offers them
another story. He replaces the animal characters with humans which cause
his original story to be doubted on. He then asked him what story he
preferred, he then answered the first and Pi said that he chose the story of
God. Later revealing that the Insurance Company used also the first story
as the real one.

B. Insights:
The movie is a metaphor for life to this extent: it presents two explanations
for an event: a ridiculously impossible story and gritty realistic story. It
then asks three people to choose which to believe (the Canadian writer and
the two Japanese insurance adjusters).
All three choose to believe the beautiful, but absurd, story. All three reject
the nasty reality.

So it is with life; most people choose religion: a beautiful but absurd

explanation for the way the universe works. Most people will simply not
face up to the nasty reality that when we die, we die it will all be over
and we will not even know that we ever lived.

Facing reality is the strongest argument for treating each other with
kindness and compassion, because once you accept the fact that there is no
life after death no blissful afterlife you realize that this one life is all
that anyone will ever have. That means that taking someones life means
taking all that that person will ever have. That means that degrading a
persons life in any way, by injuring them or stealing from them or
harming them in any other way, degrades the only existence that person
will ever know. A religious person can shrug such harms off by telling
himself that his victim will go on to enjoy an eternity of bliss, but once you
recognize that every religion is absurd and that there is no such blissful
eternity, you realize that you MUST treat everyone decently.

C. Impressions

On my opinion the best scenes in the movie are the following:

The scene when Pi and Richard Parker were in the boat at an
evening night, and shows the beauty of the ocean when it is actually
untouched. When it scene on the movie suddenly shifts into the
ocean it shows the beauty of the ocean and the sky when untouched
by human pollution.
When it shows the scene when Pi and Richard Parker discovered an
unknown island made up of algae which shows the large population
of Meerkats. It just shows on that part that when you have faith in
God and never lose hope you will always find a solution.
Last is when, Pi, saw Richard Parker running off into the jungle
without even acknowledging Pi. This part might be sad but it just
shows that whatever the situation is you always have to face the
reality and starts gathering your emotion for whatever you will face.

The best value that can be learned from the movie is to not give up
whatever obstacle came into your way, never lose hope and always
have faith in God. But most of all, always face the reality.

D. Recommendation
The most obvious target audience would be people to someone
literally sad and facing hard problems.

I would most likely recommend this to a person losing hope and

starting to break theyre connections with God. This is most useful to

a men who keeps on visualizing illusions and trying hard to cover
the reality.