Life of Pi ***** (2012, Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Adil Hussain, Rafe Spall, Gérard Depardieu) – Classic Movie Review 280

‘I had to tame him’, Pi realizes. ‘It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.’

Boasting astounding cinematography, marvellous production designs. a gorgeously lush score and perhaps the most amazing CGI ever, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s haunting fable is a stunning-looking assault on the senses. Based on the bestselling novel by Yann Martel, it tells the life-affirming tale of a shipwrecked Indian boy and the scary Bengal tiger he shares a lifeboat with. Or does he?

Nominated for a total of 11 Academy Awards including Best Film, it won four Oscars for Best Direction, Cinematography (Claudio Miranda), Score (Mychael Danna) and Visual Effects (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik De Boer, Donald Elliott). Rarely have such Oscars been so thoroughly deserved.

It was always going to be a huge and vastly costly challenge to film Life of Pi. Indeed it would have been impossible without today’s generation of seamless visual effects that allow an actor to work with a tiger without actually suffering for his art and getting gobbled up. A frightening $120million budget for the production was somehow scared up too.

This is a blockbuster budget for what is in effect an art movie. Though, helped by the Oscar buzz and a canny publicity campaign, they managed to scare up a lot of business, $125million at the US box office and £27million in the UK, with a total of more than $600million worldwide.

But Ang Lee has found the key to filming the book, by focusing in close on the developing love affair between boy and beast. Working mostly within the desperately small, confined context of the lifeboat, Lee keeps it incredibly intense, moving and compelling.

Emotional though it is, and like its hero you may well want to shed a tear or two by the end, the movie is perhaps most memorable as an eye-boggling visual triumph. And it’s even better seen in 3D, which is used beautifully.

A Golden Globe winner for Mychael Danna’s score and Bafta winners for the score and visual effects, it’s unquestionably one of 2012’s finest, most memorable movies. Indeed, it was the American Film Institute’s Film of the Year.

Bizarrely, the acting has been completely neglected at awards time, but both Suraj Sharma as the young castaway Pi Patel and Irrfan Khan as his older self, who narrates the whole tale to a Canadian writer and journalist (played by Rafe Spall), are outstanding.

Though the less said about Gérard Depardieu’s turn as the ship’s cook, the better! This cook’s favourite dish is obviously sliced ham!

RIP Irrfan Khan, Bollywood icon and star of Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and Jurassic World (2015), died on 29 April 2020, at age 53. Irrfan Khan plays the Police Inspector in Slumdog Millionaire (2008).

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 280

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com