Not so pious Pi
On the opening night of the 50th New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, director Ang Lee announced that his new film, Life of Pi, was “a story about faith” — a subject he reckoned was discussed too little in modern movies. Life of Pi is an adaptation of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel — the sort of book that does not attract admirers so much as converts. Lee’s film begins with an author, presumably intended to be Martel (played by Rafe Spall), seeking out the middle-aged “Pi” Patel (Irrfan Khan) in Montreal, having been told that Patel is in possession of a story that will “make you believe in God”.
The film that follows consists of three sections. In the first, we see Patel’s boyhood in Puducherry, which is marked by his eclectic, dilettante interest in whatever religion he can get his hands on, drawn in turn to the Hindu, Christian and Muslim sects in his hometown. The second section — and certainly the one bound to attract the most attention, due to its spectacular imagery and consuming immediacy — sees Pi’s heretofore-abstract faith tested by an ordeal, as he spends 227 days lost at sea on a life raft, with only a hungry Bengal tiger named Richard Parker for company, bearing witness to natural miracles that ordinary men will never see, visualised in extravagant 3D computer generated imagery. In the film’s last section, Patel recalls the incredulity
