Happy Pi Day ILTBTA readers! While you’re curled up with your favorite celebratory pie (perhaps of the pizza or even chicken pot variety), why not also enjoy Ang Lee’s celebrated 2012 adventure-drama Life of Pi? Grab a slice, think about how long you could survive on a lifeboat, and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: There’s a tiger. There’s a boat. There’s a kid. That’s everything!
Tyler: Aside from the major story beats you listed, I remember hearing a lot of buzz around this movie and hoping it wouldn’t steal the Best Picture win from my pick from that year: Silver Linings Playbook. The Oscars that year also introduced me to the phrase “visionary director,” which was an honorific often applied to Life of Pi director Ang Lee around then. (After seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon years later, I now understand why.) I think there might also be some magical/mystical/fantastical elements to this too? That could be fun, let’s find out if it’s true!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): A young man who survives a disaster at sea is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
A middle-aged Pi Patel stands in his kitchen in Canada, describing the serene scenes of the Pondicherry Zoo where he grew up to a writer who has come to visit. The writer met Pi’s uncle Mamaji, who suggested Pi’s life would be ripe for a book. Mamaji is an extraordinary swimmer, taking a dip in every pool he comes upon in his travels. There was one pool in France that had the clearest water and was his favorite among them all: Piscine Molitor in France. Pi’s father was so taken with the story that he named his son after it. Pi reflects that Mamaji’s swimming lessons helped save his life in the end, but admittedly, the name Piscine is tough for a school-age kid. Bullies immediately pronounce it “pissing.” One year after summer break, our boy comes back prepared: in each successive class, he introduces himself as Pi and then recites an increasing number of the digits of pi. This culminates in math class, where he fills blackboard upon blackboard with numbers, solidifying his nickname.
Tyler: We all knew “that kid” who thought it was impressive to know a bunch of digits of pi, so it’s refreshing to see it actually be socially meaningful for once!
Ellen: Tyler, “that kid” will pop up in Gilmore Girls!
Tyler: That show has a bit about everything so that does not surprise me one iota.
Talk turns to religion when Pi says “amen” after praying over his lunch, and he explains that he’s always been interested in God. His first introduction was Krishna. Pi’s father had polio as a child and did not buy into religion, but his mother did, and Pi was fascinated. It was not limited to Hinduism, however. He was introduced to Christianity at age 12 when his brother Ravi dared him to drink holy water for 2 rupees in a classic older brother move. Pi ends up talking with the priest quite a lot and begins to consider himself Catholic. He takes to Islam just as quickly when introduced. Pi’s father thinks following three religious paths at once is the same as not following anything at all, and just urges his son to use his reason and not believe everything blindly. Pi is like “cool, cool, absolutely, I gotcha Dad, and also I’d like to be baptized.”
Ellen: There’s a scene of young Pi praying to Vishnu, thanking him for introducing him to Christ, and I feel like that line sums up Pi’s take on religion pretty neatly.
Tyler: From my contemporaneous notes: “This boy is collecting religions like infinity stones.”
The writer makes mention of Pi surviving all alone on the shipwreck, and Pi corrects him, saying Richard Parker was there too. And plot twist (only to those who haven’t seen the movie poster): Richard Parker was a Bengal tiger! He got his name due to a clerical error, and it stuck. Pi’s family runs the Pondicherry Zoo, and the whole family gets in on the animal care. It’s big excitement when Richard Parker arrives, and young Pi takes Ravi with him to try to feed him by hand. Their father stops them before Pi is definitely about to lose his hand, and, in the name of teaching them a lesson, forces them to watch Richard Parker devour an unfortunate goat. Pi becomes disenchanted after that and remains that way until he meets Anandi while playing drums for her dance class. The two sixteen-year-olds have a romance just long enough to break each other’s hearts. Pi’s family has to leave India due to “The Emergency.” They’ll settle in Canada and sell the animals. Pi’s father declares that they’ll sail like Columbus! An angry Pi rightly exclaims that Columbus was looking for India.
Ellen: My perception of Life of Pi was that this was like a 10-year-old kid surviving on the ocean, so I was slightly relieved to realize he was 16.
All aboard the Japanese freighter Tsimtsum1! The surly French cook is not into the family’s vegetarianism, but they do share a nice moment with a self-described “happy Buddhist” sailor who just eats the rice. Somewhere over the Mariana Trench, a gigantic storm is brewing. Pi excitedly heads up to the deck alone to check it out, unsuccessful in his attempt to wake Ravi to come see. The storm is as ferocious as the animals in the cargo hold, and this boat is going down. Pi can’t find his family, and he ends up in a lifeboat alone, save for a zebra that falls in and breaks its leg! As the ship sinks, Pi reaches an oar to help someone else in the boat and EEEK it’s Richard Parker! Morning dawns on choppy seas. The lifeboat is half-covered, with Pi on top, Richard Parker underneath, and the zebra in the open. Eventually, a drugged hyena makes an appearance from under the cover, and an orangutan named Orange Juice floats by on a large bunch of bananas to join the party. The hyena loses its buzz pretty quickly2 and, realizing it can’t get to Pi while he stands on the slippery cover, goes for the zebra instead. Pi is disgusted, but he has bigger problems. He realizes the boat has supplies, and while he builds a little out-raft to put some distance between himself and his newfound floating zoo, the hyena kills Orange Juice! An enraged Pi goes to attack the hyena, but before he can, a wild Richard Parker appears and does it for him!
Tyler: Angry WikiWikiWhaaaat inclusion: The surly French cook is played by Gérard Depardieu, a French actor who has some extremely icky sexual assault and rape allegations against him. How ‘bout we just, I don’t know, don’t cast this guy?
Pi retreats to his makeshift raft and sobs, having placated Richard Parker with a rat he found. The lifeboat supplies included a seafaring book, which both encourages him not to lose hope and shows him there are no natural currents in his area. Richard Parker has the zebra to snack on for now, but at 5 kilos of meat a day, this cat’s going to need more soon. Pi has the benefit of biscuit rations (again: for now). He attempts to learn to catch fish so Richard Parker’s last meal isn’t a skinny vegetarian boy, and eventually Richard Parker just jumps in to do it himself! He nabs a fish and then swims right for said skinny vegetarian boy, who hastily reels his raft back in. The tiger can’t get back into the boat without help, and though Pi considers letting him drown, he eventually lets him back in. Pi’s raft system grows to include a fishing net, and he manages to catch one! He beats the life out of it and tosses it to the boat, horrified but thankful. One night, the ocean is filled with bioluminescent jellyfish, and Pi and the tiger are so captivated that they fail to notice a giant whale that breaches right next to them, destroying the raft and all its supplies!
Ellen: I just kept thinking: to be facing all of these hardships… in your pajamas!!
Tyler: Me too! I wonder which of my ten-year-old t-shirts and basketball shorts would have done me the best good on a life raft.
Pi recounts that hunger can change everything you thought you knew about yourself, including whether this movie is in standard or widescreen3. During a very confusing attack of flying fish, Pi successfully challenges Richard Parker for a big one by yelling and brandishing an oar. He devours the raw fish, and decides that he can’t risk his life every time he comes to the boat for supplies; Richard Parker cannot be tamed, but maybe he can be trained. Using a long stick and chunks of fish, the slow process begins, but what else does Pi have to do? Caring for the tiger gives his life purpose and keeps him alert. After an unsuccessful attempt to flag down a passing cargo ship, Pi rereads “above all, don’t lose hope” as he recites the numbers of his name despondently. He can’t tell day dreams from night dreams anymore, seeing indescribable wonders out at sea.
Ellen: Some of the visuals here are really cool, or at least doing their best to be. It’s not this movie’s fault the CG is 20 years old!
Tyler: Having watched this with Avatar: The Way of Water still relatively fresh in my mind did not help its case in that regard. Still very impressive for the time though.
Another intense storm comes, and if the last one took down a whole cargo freighter, then this little lifeboat doesn’t stand a chance! Buffeted by the wind and driving rain, Pi screams that he’s ready to see God. He pulls back the tarp to show Richard Parker, who is terrified, and Pi would be too if he weren’t delirious. The storm carries away Supply Raft II, and both Pi and the tiger are in bad shape. Pi dribbles the last of his water into Richard Parker’s mouth, touching him for the first time, and apologizes for the fact that they’re dying. They wake to find the boat bumping against a small island! He disembarks, finding pools of fresh water and just endless meerkats. Pi eats roots and drinks, and a roar tells him Richard Parker has entered the chat, gleefully chomping on the local fauna. At night, Pi and the meerkats sleep in the trees, while Richard Parker goes back to the boat. The entire island glows, but Pi notices that the pools become acidic and fill up with dead fish, and he peels back the leaves of a flower to reveal a human tooth. He explains to the writer that the island was carnivorous, so Pi takes the supplies he needs and sails off with Richard Parker the next day.
Tyler: This floating island of meerkats confused the heck out of me, but I just assumed it too was some sort of allegory and I let it pass.
Finally, after 227 days at sea, the boat reaches the Mexican shore, which is very far from the Mariana Trench!! Pi collapses, and Richard Parker doesn’t even look back as he disappears into the jungle. Adult Pi recounts that he knows his dad was right, and Richard Parker was never and could never be his friend, but Pi also has to believe what he saw in the tiger’s eyes was more than his own soul reflected back. While Pi recovers in Mexico, Japanese insurance adjusters come to see him as the only survivor of the Tsimtsum. Pi recounts his tale, and they are not into it, not least because bananas don’t float. He tells a different story, where he, his mother, the cook, and the Buddhist sailor survived. The sailor’s leg was broken, so the cook killed him for meat and bait. He eventually kills Pi’s mother too, and Pi sees her eaten by sharks. The next day, he kills the cook. This too is quite a lot for men in the insurance business, and they leave without questioning him further.
Tyler: In the insurance guys’ defense (something you don’t hear very often), I too could barely believe that Pi survived for nearly eight months and made it clear across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico. Like I almost wish it had been a slightly more believable duration and distance, though I understand believability is just about the last thing this movie cares about.
Ellen: Yeah I don’t have a great handle on how long is feasible, but I assume the duration was picked by the author on purpose.
Our dear friend the writer spoon-feeds it to us: the zebra is the sailor, the hyena the cook, the orangutan his mother, and Pi himself is the tiger. Pi points out that neither story explains why the ship sank, and you can’t prove which one is true. So: what’s the better story? The writer declares it’s the one with the tiger, and Pi responds “so it goes with God.” Pi’s wife and two children (one of whom is named Ravi) arrive home, and he invites the writer to stay for dinner. Looking at Pi’s copy of the insurance report, he reads that Pi’s survival story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks. “Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.”
Tyler: I know it’s supposed to be somewhat ambiguous and not part of the larger point of the story, but the ending here sort of confused me. If the insurance people scoffed at the believability of the “animal story” why did their report go with that story instead of the much more plausible one with the humans? Or is the word “claim” doing a lot of work?
Ellen: I think it’s supposed to be that even though the adjusters didn’t believe the animal story, it also didn’t matter, and they chose to go with the version Pi himself preferred. Humanity!
Intermission
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Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Life of Pi’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Life of Pi is based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Canadian author Yann Martel. Martel chose the name Richard Parker for the novel’s tiger after seeing it in three different instances of shipwrecks: an Edgar Allen Poe nautical adventure novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in which a mutineer named Richard Parker, who’s accompanied by a dog named Tiger, is cannibalized; the English criminal case R v Dudley and Stephens in which a cabin boy named Richard Parker is cannibalized in a lifeboat; and the 1846 sinking of the Francis Spaight, described later by author Jack London, in which a sailor named Richard Parker drowned.
Ellen: Also a heavy emphasis on cannibalism, which: yikes…
From 2007 to 2011, Martell ran a book club with then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Every two weeks, Martell would send Harper a novel, play, piece of poetry, graphic novel, or children’s book. The accompanying letters were released as a book in 2012 titled 101 Letters to a Prime Minister.
Rhythm & Hues Studios performed the visual effects for Life of Pi, later winning an Oscar for its work. Sadly, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy only a few months after Life of Pi was released and before the Oscars ceremony. Before ending operations in November 2020, R&H worked on a staggeringly unique array of movies and TV shows, winning Emmy Awards for their work on three episodes of Game of Thrones.
Ellen: RIP, not least of which because Rhythm & Hues is a great name.
Tyler: Right?!
Over 3,000 actors auditioned for the lead role of Pi, with the part eventually going to acting newcomer Suraj Sharma. Among those who auditioned was Canadian actor Rajiv Surendra, best known for his role as Kevin G in Mean Girls. After reading Life of Pi on the set of Mean Girls and noticing several similarities between himself and the protagonist (both were Tamil, were curious about religion as children, and Surendra’s childhood home backed up to a zoo), Surendra made it his life’s goal to land the part. He dropped out of college to move to Pondicherry and learn the local dialect, enrolled in Pi’s school from the book, and (upon moving back to Canada) learned how to swim. He later chronicled his ultimately unsuccessful attempt in his memoir The Elephants in My Backyard.
Ocean scenes were filmed in a 1.7 million gallon wave tank built by the film’s crew in an abandoned airport in Taiwan. It was at the time the largest self-generating wave tank in the world.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role4. And the nomnomnominees are:
The zebra
The hyena
The rat
And the Oscar goes to … whomever Richard Parker says it does! We will accept this award on their behalf… from afar… very far…
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to treat the Academy to some fresh sashimi in honor of Pi’s fishing skills. This was an interesting one! I guess I knew at some point that it got fantastical, and it really did a good job of balancing that crazy imagery with the harsh realities of being shipwrecked. This one is going to be sailing toll-free in my brain for a while, but I don’t really have anything intelligent to say about it. Tyler’s absolutely right that this movie manages to make you genuinely worried and compelled even though you know Pi survives. Welcome to the Apollo 13 Pantheon, buddy!
Tyler: I’d like to give the Academy a big slice of (Pondi)cherry5 pie. While much of the credit for the engaging story goes to the original source material (I was kept guessing the whole time despite knowing he’d survive), it was still a conscious decision by the filmmakers to stick pretty close to that thought-provoking script, which I think was ultimately the right call. Many of the ocean-based special effects and assorted visuals were dazzling (really earning those Best Director, Cinematography, and Visual Effects Oscar wins), though some took me out of the story just enough to remind me that it was all happening in a giant pool somewhere.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
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Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Our next ILTBTA post will be the 1968 historical drama The Lion in Winter starring acting legends Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. The film is set during Christmas of 1183 amid some royal turmoil in the family of Henry II of England. Palace intrigue! The Lion in Winter is available to rent from all the usual places we usually spend $3.99 plus tax.
Until then, maybe stay off boats for a while, just in case.
Sounds like my ex-wife!
The format changed several times, and maybe this was just how it was for streaming, but it was distracting.
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.
Ellen: HONK 😂
Tyler: That’s our mating call: a pun-induced honk.