By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Adil Hussein | Gautam Belur | Gerard Depardieu | Irrfan Khan | Rafe Spall | Suraj Sharma | Tabu
Country: taiwan, united_states
Year: 2012
Running time: 127
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/combined
Thom says: “Director Lee has been enormously appreciated by me with top-rated films THE WEDDING BANQUET, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, HULK, SENSE & SENSIBILITY, TAKING WOODSTOCK, & BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, & only one real failure in RIDE WITH THE DEVIL. So this adaptation from the blockbuster Yann Martel novel can be expected to be gorgeous and indeed it is. For those that have only just returned from another planet the story is about an Indian boy/man, the son of a zookeeper from Pondicherry, India who, with his family, hops a large freighter to Canada. After a terrible shipwreck Pi finds himself on a large lifeboat with a zebra, an hyena, a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and an orangutan. While the film has large segments with Pi growing up, at school, & with his family, and Pi as a middle-aged man telling his story to a travelling writer, the bulk of the
remembered story is the weeks that Pi spends on the lifeboat fighting for his survival while drifting on the body-of-water he’s trapped on. One beautiful sequence Pi lands on a very mysterious island with ambiguous consequences. While I was mesmerized throughout the film I took some exception to one of the possibilities of the story told, after all this is a work of fiction. Spectacular photography & camera work enhance this already noteworthy effort. Depardieu, the noted ex-Frenchman, turns up as the freighter’s hefty cook. 4.5 cats”