Film / Life of Pi

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Life of Pi is a 2012 adventure 3D Movie directed by Ang Lee. It is adapted from the 2001 novel of the same name.

In The '70s, Piscine Motor "Pi" Patel (Suraj Sharma in his debut role as a teenager and Irrfan Khan as an adult) is a philosophical teenager. Pi's zookeeper father intends to move the family from India to Canada and the family gets on a ship with all their animals. However, a storm hits and the boat sinks. Pi finds himself on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named "Richard Parker". Shortly after, it's just him and the tiger, and Pi decides to try and keep both of them alive as he tries to reach land.

The film costars Tabu and Adil Hussain as Pi's parents, Gérard Depardieu as the chef, and Rafe Spall as the writer.

Tropes:

• A Boy and His X: Played With. The teenage Pi's experience with the tiger Richard Parker while on a lifeboat together massively changes him, but he is heartbroken that at the end of their journey the tiger doesn't acknowledge him at all.
• Adaptational Context Change: Pi talks about his father Santosh having lost his faith in God, on account of having suffered from polio at a young age, eventually being cured with Western medicine. In the original, book it was a friend named Mr. Kumar, not Pi's father.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the book, as the boat begins to sink, the sailors on board throw Pi overboard onto the already descended life boat because they realize that there is a hyena on board, and he suspects they intended to use him as a sacrifice to the hyena, hoping that he would somehow get rid of it but probably die in the process. In the movie, they are all preparing to get on the life raft, but put Pi first since he's so young. If the Zebra hadn't jumped onto the boat in a panic, knocking the other sailor on the boat off to his death and knocking the boat free into the water, they all would have gotten on. None of them knew about the hyena...
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the book, Pi rechristens himself just by introducing himself as Pi at his new school where most students don't already know him as "Pissing". In the movie, he does it at the same school by writing out 100 digits of the number pi, turning him into a school legend.
• Adaptational Jerkass: The Japanese sent to question Pi after he survives are much more straightforward about not caring about his first tale than they are in the book.
• Adaptational Modesty: In the book, Pi's clothes more or less rot off of his body, forcing him to spend a large portion of his journey naked. In the movie, he still goes shirtless, but gets to keep his pants, for obvious reasons.
• Adapted Out: The French cook does not appear until the second story where the animals are all humans.
• Analogy Backfire: When Pi's father Santosh announces that they are leaving India for Canada.
  Santosh: We will sail like [Christopher Columbus].
  Pi: But Columbus was sailing for India!
• Arc Symbol: An image of the Hindu deity Vishnu lying supine. It's very prominent in several scenes of the film, starting with an idol of it that Pi prays to early on. His silhouette is present in the edge of the Challenger Deep, and the island that Pi spends time on.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The film is normally 1.85:1. But the flying fish scene is in Cinemascope and the shot recreating the book cover is in Academy Ratio.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Exaggerated. Apparently every body of water glows piercing blue at night. Justified as bioluminescent plankton and pelagic worms really are very common on the tropical Pacific.
• Bloodless Carnage: The book is pretty descriptive of the violence the Hyena inflicts on the Zebra and Orange Juice, particularly when it eats the Zebra inside out while the Zebra is alive. The movie largely settles for a Gory Discretion Shot with the corpses being largely pristine and bloodless. The movie ends up with a PG rating.
• Composite Character: Pi's father takes on the role of Mr. Kumar as the atheist in Pi's life. While in the book, Pi's father is very secular, he is not as ardent about it as in the movie.
• Dead Guy Junior: It's easy to miss, but Pi's son's name at the end of the movie is Ravi, after his dead brother.
• Edible Theme Naming: Like in the book, one of the animals at the Patel family's zoo is an orangutan named Orange Juice.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The dream sequence where the camera goes ever deeper in the ocean features a sperm whale attacked by a giant squid then exploding into zoo animals, a hideous anglerfish/squid hybrid, and the sunken cargo.
• Embarrassing First Name: The main character is named 'Piscine' after a French swimming pool. Unfortunately this is pronounced very similarly to the English word 'pissing', as his classmates are quick to point out. He shortens his name to 'Pi' as a result.
• Fiendish Fish: During Pi's dream sequence, he imagines a hybrid of an anglerfish and a squid rising from the depths.
• Foreshadowing: When the meerkats on the island are first shown, you can see fish skeletons all over the place. In short order, it's revealed that the island itself is carnivorous and the pools of freshwater that sustained Pi in the day turn into giant stomachs digesting any fish that come too close to the island.
• Frame Break: In one sequence, the frame narrows to Cinemascope to show fish jumping out of the frame.
• Framing Device: The bulk of the story is told by an older Pi to a writer interviewing him for a book.
• French Jerk: The French cook seems to delight in telling Pi's vegetarian family that they can either eat meat or stay hungry.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The Patel family, being natives of the Indian Union Territory of Pondicherry (now known as Puduchcheri), occasionally speak Tamil, due to their home being within the state of Tamil Nadu. Some versions of the film mistakenly state that they speak Hindi, however. Pi's parents also speak a bit of Gratuitous French, while on board their ship, thanks to their home having formerly been a French colony, where their influence is still present to this day.
• If You Can Read This: According to the pages of the Japanese report, a major storm was not reported in the area of the ship when it sank. Additionally, the report says the ship sank stern first but the movie portrays it bow first. It can be used to indicate the Unreliable Narrator.^note Although considering the fact that the movie takes place in the 1970s, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to believe that the storm was simply undetected. Which is an occurrence that still happens today for multiple different reasons. Moreover, it's possible that those reporting could have made a mistake when describing how the ship sank, or maybe they don't even know where the ship actually lies. The original book doesn't use this.
• Interfaith Smoothie: Pi's main motivation, wanting to simply love God, compared to his secular father, who doesn't believe it much. His exposure to the monotheistic Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism helps, combined with his default faith of Hinduism.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Pi's father may have been harsh with his decision to make him watch the tiger Richard Parker eat a goat, as a way of teaching him the dangers of such animals, he's not wrong with the fact that not all animals have human emotions, on top of "becoming a man". Posthumously, an adult Pi comes to realize that his father was right after all, due to the very real danger he was in while cast adrift for months on end, and after everything, when Richard Parker disappeared into the Mexican jungles, not once did he look back at his human companion, leaving him behind forever.
• Jump Scare:
  • In the film, Richard Parker abruptly kills the hyena.
  • The tiger charges Pi from a dead angle.
• Paddleball Shot: Thanks to the film being in 3D, a few scenes take advantage of this, such as a scene of a young Pi swimming, and him fighting the flying fish, one of which he smacks with his oars.
• Pet the Dog: The Jerkass Cook is last seen urging his fellow sailors to join him in the lifeboat, before a zebra jumps in and knocks him off the boat. He could have easily left the sailors to their fates, but refuses to lower the boat whilst the other men were onboard.
• Poverty Food: The ship has a grumpy cook in a sleazy galley serving his gravy-rich stodge to the ship's lower deck passengers.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Ang Lee commented that while they tried to remain as faithful to the book as possible, some scenes simply could not be adapted perfectly. He explained that facing a situation where the crew spent the better part of a whole day shooting the same scene, the lead actor was showing signs of distress due to filming in cold weather for hours and everyone's nerves were fraying, he chose to be pragmatic about it rather than sticking to perfectionism.
• Scare 'Em Straight: Pi's father, Santosh employs this by forcing his son to watch Richard Parker eat a live goat. While we are spared the sight of the tiger being fed, we only see the family's reactions. Mainly it's a result of Santosh's Anger Born of Worry, as his sons were without the zookeeper Selvam, and they very easily could have gotten hurt, but his wife Geeta feels upset with his decision, since he scarred him.
• Scenery Porn: Ang Lee brings the book's lush scenes of the Pacific to life on screen.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: When the hyena attacks the zebra, the film cuts to a shot of the boat from a distance in the sunset, where we see the silhouette of the struggling zebra and Pi and Orange Juice screaming at the sight.
• Symbolic Serene Submersion: The sinking scene includes a shot where Piscine, while underwater, sees the ship he was on sinking in front of him, and hangs motionless in the water for several seconds, silhouetted by its lights, as though overwhelmed by the enormity of what has happened.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Pi acquires a shell-shocked gaze after the orangutan is killed.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Pi is played by four different actors; Suraj Sharma gets most of the screen time as the teenage Pi, followed by Irrfan Khan as adult Pi. Ayush Tandon plays Pi at age 11-12 and Gautam Belur plays Pi at age 5.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Everyone knows that Pi spends nearly a year with a wild Bengal tiger on a lifeboat thanks to the trailer and the cover art. In both the book and the movie, that reveal actually comes much later where Pi calls out to Richard Parker to make it to the boat, and in the movie where Pi as a boy tried to feed him.
• Unreliable Narrator: Like in the book, it's not made clear whether or not Pi actually spent all his time with the aforementioned animals, or whether or not they're stand-ins for people — the cook, a sailor, his mother, himself. Plus since he's constantly suffering from starvation and dehydration, some of Pi's more fantastic experiences may have been embellished, such as the carnivorous island. The film initially presents the ending as less ambiguous, but Freeze-Frame Bonus on the report contradicts some of Pi's story, like a storm sinking the ship.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: As a result of the shipwreck Pi spends much of the film shirtless with pants on.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": The tiger winds up with the human name "Richard Parker" due to a clerical error, since the hunter Richard Parker accidentally wrote his own name in the space for the animal's, and his name was thus recorded as "Thirsty None Given".