Life of Pi (2013)

I need not have worried. Life of Pi the movie was visually spectacular – check; sweeping and majestic – check; densely wove themes of religion, love, identity, and the nature of humanity, story and truth – check; depicted passage of time, minutely detailed how to survive at sea and journeyed into fantastic worlds – check.

Even more happily, it did all this neatly within the allotted two hours.

I was amazed by the skill of this storytelling. I was so excited I spent most of the time alternately shrinking back in my chair or almost jumping out of it. The rest of the time I spent silently leaking tears.

I loved this movie so much that I sat there throughout all the ads, all the previews and all the movie, despite the coffee AND the diet coke (I went hungover. I needed both. Don’t judge me). After a while I forgot that I even had a body that needed to pee. I was just spellbound.

The CG and the cinematography were lovingly done, and that tiger was damned impressive.

The two small factors – don’t want to ruin any surprises so will mention only briefly – that I noticed differed significantly from the book were the lack of graphic physical violence and blood-and-bone savagery, and the absence of a plot point in its latter half.

These, really, concerned me not a jot. Go for it. Go for the PG audience. The story deserves the widest audience possible, and our imaginations can fill in the rest.

I am glad about how Ang Lee chose to portray the story Pi tells in hospital towards the end, with an unerring focus on Pi’s face as he tells a story that increases in horror and intensity as it unfolds.

At the end, I even had a cathartic “aha!” moment, in which one line – “and so it is with God” – finally made sense to me. It closed the aching little wound Pi’s horrible story had opened up and filled me with the peace of understanding and acceptance.

Well, it did!

I loved this movie, and I hope Lee wins his Best Director and Best Picture Oscars.