What Nix? Two posts in three days? What is with you?
Well, I'm feeling a bit posty.
I said my next post would be about my adventure to find the mysterious YouTube Subscription Management thingy. Well, who cares about that. I'm here to talk about Life of Pi.
I just saw this movie, so I'm going to post about it while it's still fresh. Who cares about the whole 'sinking in' thing, I'm already forgetting the start, so let's get right to it.
The most common statement I've heard about LOP is 'a visual masterpiece'. This is true, and I'm deeply sad that the cinema closest to be didn't show it in 3D any more, but I'm I the only one who loved the plot?
Let's start from the beginning. And by that I mean the parts that matter to me. Suffice to say, major spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie, just leave. If you have no plans to see the movie, you can stay if you want, but I'm not going to make it sound good, like it is, I'm going to pick bits, and this will basically put you off a good movie.
So, it starts of with a writer questioning Pi about his story. The writer's been told that this story will make him believe in God, that it's an incredible story. So Pi begins.
I'm skipping over Pi's childhood, I'll give you a brief summary. In India, father runs a zoo,Pi follows three religions because he sees God in all of them (Hindi, Catholic and Islam). Father decides to sell his animals and move to Canada. Pi and his family get on a Japanese boat, with all the animals on board as well, and set off to Canada.
Right, this is where I'll go into more detail.
Pi is Pi hears a storm in the middle of the night, so he tells his brother that they should go look at it. Brother basically tells him to piss off, so Pi goes and sees it himself. While out there, he sees a massive wave hit the ship. It's hard to see this scene, because it's so dark, but something makes Pi go to his room, yelling for his family. That part of the ship is flooded, so Pi goes back up to get some help. Some crew members throw him into a lifeboat, a zebra jumps in, and something happens that I forget makes the lifeboat fall into the water with Pi by himself. And the zebra. The scene is still dark, so I couldn't see very well, but basically a tiger, who's called Richard Parker, climbs aboard the boat. Pi jumps off the boat to get away from Richard Parker, and sees the ship sinking bellow him.
He climbs back in the lifeboat, with no sign of the tiger, and the scene cuts to morning.
I forget the exact order of what happens next. Pi sees that the zebra has a broken leg. He sees a orangutan floating on some bananas, and manages to get her on board, losing the bananas in the process. Then a hyena jumps out from bellow a part of the boat that's under a tarp, and tries to attack everyone. Still drugged up from it's time on the ship, it fails.
Later on, the hyena kills the zebra. The orangutan attacks it, and seemingly defeats it, but then they hyena jumps up and kills the orangutan.
Pi gets pissed, and prepares to kill it with a knife, when Richard Parker jumps out from under the tarp and kills the hyena. Pi stays on the far side of the tarp, which the tiger is unwilling to go over. I think it's because his claws stick to it or something.
Anyway, I'm not going to go over the whole love for you, this post is for the ending of the movie, and the things I've mentioned are essential to the ending.
MAJOR SPOILERS, WARNING. PEOPLEWHOHAVEN'TWATCHEDTHISMOVE WILL BE SHOT
So the lifeboat washes up on shore, the Mexican short if I remember. Pi, spent by that time, collapses on the sand. Richard Parker jumps out, and although he's spent as well, walks to the jungle, and stops. Pi's sure he'll look back, in a goodbye short of thing. But Richard Parker continues walking without looking back, robbing Pi of his chance to say goodbye.
Pi is found by some people, and brought to a hospital. Soon he is questioned by Japanese people (I forget the exact job of them) about what happened to the ship. Pi tells them his story, but they don't believe him. They ask him for a more believeable story, the truth. After a pause (in which I was sure Pi was going to tell them it was the trust) he starts talking about a different story. In which a cook, a sailor and his mother were on the lifeboat. The sailor has a broken leg, which gets infected. The cook allows him to die instead of saving him, and then eats the sailor. Pi's mother attacks the cook, and is also killed. Pi, in a moment of anger, kills the cook. He says that not only did that cook do horrible things, but forced Pi to do a horrible thing as well.
Cuts back to the writer talking to Pi. Pi hands the writer the report that the Japenese men wrote. The writer realizes that the sailor was the zebra, both of which had broken a leg. The cook was a hyena, who killed, and the orangutan was Pi's mother. And, of course, Pi was the tiger, who had killed the cook.
Pi asked the writer which story he preferred, and the writer says the first one. Pi smiles, and goes to see his wife. The writer looks at the report, and at the end it says that Pi was very lucky, to survive with a tiger, showing that the Japaneses men also believed the first story.
I liked this movie, but one thing annoyed me. Where was that bit that would make one believe in God? That fact that Pi survived the whole thing? That was amazing, but hardly a way to make people believe in God.
I can't believe my mother got this, but I had to look up Life of Pi (I was trying to find out the actors name) before I found out where it was.
Most people who watched this movie would probably say, if they had too choose, that they believed the first story. That's what it represents. The second story, realistic, is not belief in God, and the first story, hard to believe, but wondering and nice, is belief in God (I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED THAT!)
Maybe I'm just thick, but whatever.
I like how the ending's open to interpretation. How people can believe one story if they want.
If there's one complaint about this movie, it's the whole choice thing. People will choose the first choice because a whole movie was spent explaining and showing it, while five minutes of just talking showed the second story. They good thing about this choice is Pi's reaction. While telling the second story, Pi shows genuine sadness and tears, which puts doubt in people's minds, and makes the second story a proper choice.
If anyone cares, I believe in the first story (not that any of this happened in the real world, but still).
By the way, don't let the fact that the stories represent believing and not believing affect your choice about which story you think it true. Just because you choose the first story does not mean you believe in God, and Vice Vera.
But I know there are still going to be those people out there who are so determined to not even show the slightest belief that they'll choose the second story. It's the people who cannot accept that people can believe in something they don't. Those people annoy me.
Anyway, brilliant film, worth watching. Love it!
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