I just finished watching Life
of Pi last night, and I’m absolutely staggered. Stunned.
But not by the special effects, but rather the story, most particularly
the ending. Spoilers follow.
For starters, props for this post, that got me thinking in interesting
directions. (There’s also a recap of the
plot and ending here, which I won’t repeat.
OK, the analogy between the two is spelled out in the movie
itself. The hyena is the cook, the
orangutan is Pi’s mother, the zebra is the sailor, and Richard Parker is
Pi. (Or is he?) I’m a little saddened that so many viewers
(including myself) immediately jumped to the all-too-easy conclusion that the
realistic version is what really happened, and that the tiger etc. is an
invention of Pi’s to make his ordeal easier to deal with. In our defense, it’s the logical conclusion
human nature gives us.
Here the frame of the story takes center stage. The Writer character was promised a story
that would make him believe in God right from the beginning. And in the end, both the writer and even the
insurance folks choose the more entertaining and slightly less horrifying version
with the animals.
The parable between
the two versions of the story and the two versions of life and the connection
to Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam (among others) as being humanity’s way of
coping with the horrors of life is evident.
(The parallels, by the way between Pi’s pre-voyage quest to believe in
many different faces even in the face of universal opposition - and between the
story elements that comes from these different faiths: an island that looks from
a distance like Vishnu in the sea of, the many times Pi is shown with dirt in
his mouth like the Krishna story, and the visions of entire universes he sees
in the ocean. All this is from the web
site listed above. There are some
additional theories about the tiger isn’t Pi at all in the animal story, but God. The scene where the tiger leaves a long trail
of footsteps in the sand, then leaves without looking back, and yet is never
really absent from Pi’s life, generates some serious thought and emotion. Or do Pi and the tiger represent the two
warring nature of Pi himself?
But I think there’s more to it than that. Joseph Campbell said, “Myths are stories that are so true, that it doesn't matter whether they
actually happened that way or not.
They're so true that they have happened more than once." I think about this, and the frame in Life of Pi, and I think that
perhaps it’s not choosing between the two stories at all, but seeing the truth
that lies in each of them. At one level,
it’s hard to even decide why the differences should matter so much. If his mother was stabbed instead of drowned,
and the zebra drowned instead of eaten, how much does that change his
experience? If the many things that Pi
had to kill to survive include the cook, how much does that matter to the cook? How much more of a harrowing experience is
one story over the other?
Except it’s really about faith. While I’m not an active member of any faith, I’ve
always admired it and characters of faith crop up constantly in my
fiction. I’m fascinated with it. My gut instinct is that Pi - who embraced
Christianity, Hindi and Islam concurrently, would say that looking at things
properly takes the urgency out of deciding which story in the Life of Pi
is true. A statement that goes double
for how you and I walk through this world.
I don’t think the movie’s quest is really to establish one version of
the story (or the question of religion) at all, but to just engage the viewer
in this profoundly important question.
Pi goes as much to say that it is the asking of questions that becomes
more important than the definitive answers.
Another added facet is how this parable was viewed by different cultures
around globe, something Ang Lee speaks to in this interview:
A note on the lovely CGI.
I found it gorgeous, but not entirely convincing. Meaning I adored the tiger pouncing and
running off when Pi tried to feed it meat in the beginning of the movie, but I
think that it did not entirely look like a real tiger, but something faster and
more elemental. A tiger filled with God,
if you will. Something with the whiff of
unreality or dream, if you prefer. I think
this must have been deliberate and I’m in awe of the layers to this movie.
So while I’m enamored of the lovely story frame, the lavish
symbols and the constant connections between his life before and after the
shipwreck, it’s the way this movie has made me examine the way I think of
regard my world outside of the movie that has really captured me. Food for thought, especially in regard to my
current work-in-progress.
I think one of the reasons that Fantasy calls to me is its
constant use of power, epic symbols.
Trying to make your fantasy story about something that echoes inside of
the modern reader is critical, without leading them directly to your version of
some of Campbell’s truths. If you just
say a thing like, “Death really sucks” it doesn’t have much weight, regardless
of it being true. Heinrich
Zimmer said that "The best things can't be told." I think one of
the most exciting uses of fantasy in deft hands, is to point us at the truth,
for all that its cloaked in wonder. Life of Pi does that admirably. Hopefully, by picking at and dismantling these ideas enough, I can too.
