With Life of Pi, director Ang Lee continues his reputation as a cinematic chameleon, proving himself capable of making engaging, entertaining films in any genre, culture, or time period that he chooses. After his mediocre Taking Woodstock (2009), it was good to see Lee back in top form in Life of Pi. Based off the novel of the same name by Tann Martel, the film follows Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, a young Indian man who is shipwrecked and forced to spend over 270 days aboard a life-raft with a full grown Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. I was originally bothered by the film's blatant abuse of CGI (apparently every shot of Richard Parker was created with CGI). But soon I settled into the same mindset that I had during Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) where I became more interested in how the live-action characters and props interacted with the obviously animated creations. In that respect, Life of Pi is a dazzling accomplishment. Within the film, Lee creates some of the most striking images to grace American cinema in years: the doomed ship sinking underneath the waves of a storm, a school of jellyfish illuminating the sea at night, a tropical island full of meerkats, even a simple scene of an Indian religious festival becomes a rapturous celebration of shapes and colors. I also like the ambiguity introduced near the end concerning the validity of the story as it had been presented to us for nearly two hours. Life of Pi is one of those rare films that is both thought-provoking and heart-breakingly beautiful to behold.
9/10
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