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Movie Review: ‘Life of Pi,’ Directed by Ang Lee (3 Stars)

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By A.O. Scott
★★★---It unfolds in a setting that is one of the great achievements of digital cinema, and a reminder that the eclectic Mr. [Ang] Lee is, among other things, an exuberant and inventive visual artist. The problem, as I have suggested, is that the narrative frame that surrounds these lovely pictures complicates and undermines them. The novelist and the older Pi are eager to impose interpretations on the tale of the boy and the beast, but also committed to keeping those interpretations as vague and general as possible. And also, more disturbingly, to repress the darker implications of the story, as if the presence of cruelty and senseless death might be too much for anyone to handle. [link]
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Gregory A. Disney said…
I can't wait to see this movie. It looks amazing!
Wed Nov 21, 08:39:00 AM EST
Ernest Disney-Britton said…
I agree, and I hope it lives up to our expectations!
Wed Nov 21, 10:15:00 AM EST
Ann Hornaday | Washington Post (3 Stars) said…
The film’s fable-like quality is altogether appropriate for a movie that, at its core, interrogates the very notion of faith, from Pi’s porous ecumenism to his cautiously hopeful detente with nature at its most threatening. Viewers don’t have to agree wholeheartedly with the film’s allegorical views on God and religion to surrender to the sheer beauty of “Life of Pi,” which Lee deploys with rapturous extravagance, from that early sequence set in the zoo to hallucinatory scenes of flying fish, a nighttime starscape and phosphorescent jellyfish that Pi and Richard Parker encounter while adrift on the high seas. To be sure, there are scenes of cruelty and terror in “Life of Pi” as well, made all the more difficult by the filmmaker’s near-consistent refusal to anthropomorphize his four-legged subjects (this is, after all, a film that regards projection with skepticism). But for every wrenching moment there are sequences of unimaginable poetry, mysticism and even magic. For the potency of its images, “Life of Pi” has a strangely limited shelf life in the consciousness once it’s over. Still, “Life of Pi” is spellbinding while it lasts. Lee’s film can be appreciated as many things -- a post-Darwinian meditation on coexistence as the key to survival, a reflection on the spiritual nature of suffering and transcendence, a beguiling bait-and-switch on the vagaries of belief itself. Mostly, though, “Life of Pi” is a trip -- in every transporting, liberating, mind-bending sense of the word.
Wed Nov 21, 06:04:00 PM EST
Ernest Disney-Britton said…
Over the last few weeks, I have felt farther and farther away from God. I know it's not God's fault, it's my fault that I can't find the light to see the face I've grown so used to seeing everyday. For weeks now, my heart has ached when I begin to fall asleep during our pastors sermon, and when morning scriptures elude my grasp. I ache that even my daily viewings of religious art in the news have done little to help me right my path. This movie may be a start because tonight, I am inspired to also download the book. During Pi's darkest moments, he worshiped...Krishna, Christ, Allah--God, and during Pi's happiest moments, he worshiped. Like Jonah with his whale, Pi with his Tiger never lost his way even though he didn't know he was steady on the path. I will find my path. I will also own this film. "Life of Pi" is now my favorite pick for the Oscar for Cinematography, and while I'd like to see it nominated for Best Picture it's not my favorite for that particular award.
Sat Nov 24, 07:13:00 PM EST
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