This film explores the most
difficult concept with the child like curiosity and succeeds completely. Everyone
must watch it and reflect about it for some days if not for months. Watching it
itself an experience of great importance.
Hero’s father is a rationalist,
mother a devotee of Vishnu, and his elder brother is a normal guy. But he is a
seeker of different realm. Hero’s original name is Piscine Molitor Patel, since
friends in the school nick name him as pissing Patel, to avoid further humiliation
and ridicule he renames him as Pi, and gives a convincing mathematical
explanation. This act alone defines his character, not running away from the
problem but encountering it with creative solution.
He is a real chip of his father. His
dad avoids all religions, and he falls in love with all religions. The only way
to experience the reality is either reject all believe system or embrace all. Wearing
just one glass will make us color blind.
The real drama is displayed, when
the ship wreck happens, Pi is the lone survivor, after the 227 days ordeal in
the ocean. How did he survive is the main story of the film.
In fact, he narrates two stories to
a writer. One is shown to the viewer, where he along with the tiger, spotted
hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan. Hyena kills the zebra and orangutan,
and the tiger kills the hyena. Finally he is left with tiger that is waiting to
kill him for food, and he has to safe guard himself from the hungry tiger and
the furious ocean. This is story of love, courage, intelligence, compassion and
above all hope.
The second story, that he literally
narrates and not shown as visual, takes place and gets over within 5 minutes. It
is a normal ship wreck story where a decent human being learned to do the barbaric
deeds for the sake of his survival, that is kill rather getting killed and
consume the human flesh to continue to live. Four people are in the life boat –
Pi, cook, sailor with broken leg, and Pi’s mother. The cook allows the sailor
to die of injury, and then kills the mother when he tries to kill Pi, Pi accidentally kills the cook, then consumes for his survival.
Both stories have many things in
common – there is a ship wreck, the hero loses all things and all his family
members, suffers for 227 days and survives and both stories do not answer why
the ship wreck took place.
After the narration of both
stories, he asks the writer (also the viewer), which story do you want to
believe? The writer answers that he like the first story, and the hero says
that is the way to find god.
Events and facts are meaningless;
it is the interpretation what matters. How do we see the life? Is it a story of
love, compassion, courage, intelligence and hope or is it story of survival of
fittest and dog eats dog narrative?
God lives in the interpretation and
not in events and facts.
If you do not like the theological
undercurrent of the film, do not worry, the visuals are breath taking, so you
will not regret watching it.
