Bizarre Life - of Pi - Decisions

Currently Reading: 1984 by George Orwell

I’m committing Novel Ideas treason a little bit today and discussing a movie rather than a book.

The reason I find this mini act of betrayal excusable is that the movie is a film adaptation of one of my favorite books, a book I’ve actually mentioned more than once in my blog to this point, it’s been that significant to me.

Again, this post includes spoilers, both of the book and of the movie so... you've been warned!

On November 21st, Ang Lee released his film adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel, Life of Pi. This past holiday weekend, my best friend and I saw it.

As strong lovers of the novel, we both knew we were going to see it at some point, if only out of curiosity. However, we entered the theater with a healthy dose of skepticism, a habit of most avid readers who attend movie versions of their cherished novels given that 9 times out of 10, the movie is far inferior to the book.

This inferiority isn't usually the movie creators’ fault, though. A lot of what makes novels better than movies is that they can provide a more detailed, extensive, and personal experience that no movie can based on logistics alone. Aspects of the story almost always have to be cut in a film adaptation because almost no one will sit through a five-hour movie – even if it meant every loved plot point and character could be included. Furthermore, a movie immediately becomes less personal since it doesn’t allow for imagination; the faces of the characters, the way a monster looks, the landscape are all given instead of created within the individual’s mind. Therefore, if a plotline you love is removed from the movie – I’m looking at you The English Patient – or characters don’t look the way you envisioned them – that’s right Weasley twins from Harry Potter – it’s a lot harder for you to love the movie with the same fervor you loved the book.

In short, the film creator is at a severe disadvantage since his audience is much more critical of his work.

While Life of Pi was not nearly on the level of movie adaptation catastrophe as, say, Ella Enchanted (which I will never forgive that director/screenwriter for!), it still had some directorial choices that I just don’t understand. So I’m venting here.

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s not a tremendous amount of action in Life of Pi so I recognize that Ang Lee and David Magee (the screenplay writer) were limited in how action-packed a movie they could make. However, it seemed to me that they decided to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the less interesting aspects of the story. It felt as if Ang Lee was so focused on creating breathtaking visuals that he lost the story. I mean, instead of including the pivotal hallucination that’s actually important to the plot – the first hint that there’s more to the story than first meets the eye – Lee decides to create a fanciful, crazed, glowing vision of fish and zoo animals culminating in a woman’s face and then the wrecked ship at the bottom of the ocean.

Why?? Yes it was beautiful and a good break to the somewhat monotonous scene of Pi in the lifeboat on the ocean endlessly, but why??? Why choose to create this hallucination instead of the one in the story that’s actually relevant?

Then to add to the frustration, after spending about an hour on the repetitive story of Pi’s life at sea, Lee zips right through one of the most fascinating and mysterious parts of the story in about ten minutes. Of course, I’m referring to the illusive meerkat island, the element of the novel that has sparked endless amounts of discussions with my best friend in which we analyze and dissect all the possible meanings for hours. I wish I were exaggerating. Actually, when I heard they were making a movie, I somewhat held on to the fleeting hope that maybe Lee would have gotten together with Martel and be able to explain this bizarre plot point. 

Nope. Lee not only offers no new explanations, he creates absolutely no build up to the big reveal, the fact that the island is carnivorous. Plus, Pi and Richard Parker spend weeks on this island in the novel, but in the movie, they only spend a single night there. Thus there’s no real recovery period and no discovery.

Again, why??? You finally have a great visual and exciting plot point with which to work and you choose not to spend any time on it? Ugh!

My final complaint, and then I will silence myself of the subject, is about Lee’s (or Magee’s, I don’t honestly know who made the choice) addition to the cast of characters. Before leaving India, Pi suddenly has a little love story that appears absolutely nowhere in the novel. In the movie, he becomes bored with his life and then his love, Anandi, brings the change he’s looking for and reinvigorates his life. None of this is necessary in the book because, in the book, Pi’s life is plenty full from his passionate love of religion and God. What’s extra irritating about this addition is that it actually isn’t an addition in any sense to the story. Anandi pretty much never comes up again in the movie. Her relationship with Pi barely impacts his life in the long run and the love story itself doesn’t really add to Lee’s overall message. So why did Lee/Magee decide to waste time on this unimportant, uninteresting puppy love story instead of spending that time explaining meerkat island or adding in the important hallucination or visually explaining the seedy under belly of the story instead of simply having Pi relate it in a monologue?

Overall, the movie wasn’t a gross deviation from the book, which is always a relief, but I’m fairly certain it would be a bore for those who haven’t read the novel or who aren’t fascinating with new visual effects. Therefore, I'm not entirely sure if I would recommend it...

I just don’t understand these choices.

And even worse, I still don’t understand those damn meerkats.