Life of Pi: Opinions?

Love,

Margaret Atwood.

I'm actually not dismayed by the prize. There's nothing flashy, innovative, or even appealing about the writing style -- in the beginning, as mentioned, it's quite rough and near-irritating -- but once the actual work of the thing begins it's quite stellar.

What struck me is that the precis makes it feel like an abstracted allegorical thing, more of a tiger-in-the-boat "meditation," or something -- so I was almost surprised to move along into the book and find that it's a straight-up castaway story, with everything that usually entails. The glossing of that genre work with all of this generally-terrific material about religion and morality ... this is more interesting, I think, that it feels when you're actually reading it, even.

My favorite thing in it remains the comparative religious bits, particularly with Christianity -- approaching the religions almost aesthetically, comparing their sensibilities more so than their theology. (The drawing out of the "God dies" trope in Christianity, for instance.)

This isn't, obviously, some significant breakthrough in intellectual history, but his discussions of religion in that way were interesting to me -- particularly with Christianity and to some extent Islam, since those are the ones I've been around the most.

Spot-on about the descriptions -- they were a little hit-or-miss, I think, but at their best they were great. The one that's stuck with me is the comparison of accents: something like

you sound like the English language is a plank of wood and your tongue is a saw buzzing through it = you are French

you sound like your mouth is full of warm marbles = you are Indian

Its a quality book. Dunno about the prizes, but I liked it. I certainly got into it, and was sorry to let it go, which I suppose is as good a way as any of evaluating a book.

I have a nasty habit of finishing any book, and giving it a mark out of five. This got full marks - whatever that means.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=24232

I enjoyed this book a lot - though as one poster noted above, it didn't make me believe in god. I don't think it's particularly filmable, but Lee's as good a man for the job as any.

i didn't like the book, but i bet this will be cool

CGI tiger anyone?

"Mmm… pi"

ugh.

Movie was extraordinary. By far best use of 3d I've seen.

I saw this tonight as well. The use of 3D was terrific. The book sat on my dresser for a year or so then I gave it back to the person who encouraged me to read it. Got through 1 chapter and it annoyed me so I never picked it up again. Guess I'll have to read it now.

I liked the book so am hoping to see the film before long.

Liked the book at the time, hear the movie is good between a pair of lame bookends.

book was good except for last chapter, which i'd recommend just not reading tbh

Are we discussing the film anywhere else? I saw it in 3d yesterday and was kind of blown away by the art and graphics. It's a really pretty movie. Didn't like the ending much with its big "aha, do you see?" reveal, but I guess it's necessary to give the story a "point".

They should remake it with a wasp instead of a tiger and the opera singer from the Go Compare ad instead of all the meerkats.

yes.

kinda shocked this movie is closing in on $100 million.

Relatively speaking it's doing even better in the UK, £17m in only 17 days which would be equivalent to ~$135m.

Don't know if I'll have a chance to see this in 3D, but I just saw it (positively) described as looking like it was projected onto a cube of Jell-o. That sounds kind of cool.

It totally blew me away, so much so that I'm going to see it for the second time tonight. The CGI is so good that I thought it was real. During the closing credits I expected to see one of those "no animals were harmed" notices but it never came, which I couldn't understand as there were so many scenes where I thought "how did they do that and NOT harm the animal".

I hesitate to discuss the ending too much for fear of spoiling it for those not yet to see it. Just to say that I don't agree with dog latin above that it was a "aha, do you see?" moment.

I read up on imdb, the only part that involved a real tiger was when the tiger was swimming.

My missus and I were in quiet hysterics when the hyena threw up. I let out an audible "UUURGGGH! HUH HUH HUH..." in the cinema and then we were just off on one..

Didn't like the ending much with its big "aha, do you see?" reveal,

I felt incredibly manipulated by this when I read the book. I rather enjoyed it until I got to the end and found it was just a big advertisment for God.

thx, 3D hyena puke is all the excuse I need to avoid

Life of Pi is currently at $400 million worldwide. Massive hit in China and India, and it's being doing really well as the holiday family movie in the UK. I'm guessing that's why the ending was less than subtle - as it's been marketed for all age groups. But that was the problem with the book as well.

the narrative itself is clunky and the big reveal comes off as manipulative while it's happening -- the film's ideal audience is 6-12. but if you're at all interested in state of the art computer animation, once you get past that opening hour, this film is fascinating. like anagram says, if you don't go in knowing for a fact that it's CGI, you're likely to be tricked -- this, despite the fact that every second of what you're watching would be impossible to capture. there's been so much physically unconvincing CGI in major films recently that seeing a technical accomplishment on this level came across as a total surprise -- I didn't know we were here yet in terms of tricking the eye.

it's not just a tech show, though -- the film ricochets between showing you plausible storm conditions & choppy waves, and then turns around and shows you the ocean as still as a pond, stretching to the horizon and reflecting the sky during a sunset, and it all flows right. and the scenes where he really begins to lose his mind and stares over the side of the boat to meditate on inter-species marine warfare are brief but spectacularly surreal.

so if you think you want to see it, you should

I liked the book, but recall the ending being more about the power (or, perhaps more cynically, preference) of belief rather than a call to God. Like, better to believe in the possible fantasy of God than the horror of reality. But maybe I misremember it.

SPOILER ALERT:

What did you guys see as the 'big reveal' at the ending (of either the book or the movie)? Do I take it people assume that Pi's second story (about the cannibal cook) was the true story and the whole adventure with the tiger was something he made up to believe in? The book club I'm in was divided on this but most of us, including me, read the tiger story as the true story and the alternate story as something he made up for the Japanese investigators.

Interestingly, as an agnostic, I never felt manipulated or pressured by the book. In fact, the first part of the book, with Pi's spiritual musings, was my favourite. (I loved his discussion of agnosticism, in fact, and give it some credit for confirming my self-identification as agnostic rather than atheist.) I felt like the stranded-on-the-Pacific section dragged a bit. At the same time, I was disappointed by the way it was cleaned up in the film.

Now that you bring up the details, I recall reading the cannibal stuff as what really happened. Because it was plausible.

this is the crux of the film for me (haven't read the book). when I saw the film it was pretty clear to me that the tiger story was the true one and the other story was just something he made up to give the insurance people something more plausible for their report. but then in the end it is revealed that the insurance people put the tiger story in their report anyway, thereby confirming its truth.

>What did you guys see as the 'big reveal' at the ending

ok now that we're in spoiler territory it's worth talking about.

I haven't read the book. And this is actually very interesting that several people took the tiger story for the true one. I'm in the camp where the story that the man tells does the exact opposite of prove that God exists, it shows us how groups decide to agree upon myths that are preferable to reality. But this is a film where unbelievable efforts have been taken to illustrate a myth, something completely impossible to convincingly film, and made it so convincing that you want to believe.

So on the basis of sund4r & Anagram's intelligent votes of confidence for the Tiger story, this film is proving to be rather interesting as a litmus test (and I'm agnostic myself)

I’m atheist myself, and I read the reveal to say many people prefer to read life in parables because life is so bleak and brutal. I, and a few people I know have been feeling very low or depressed this year, so perhaps this is colouring my parsing.

SPOILER CONTINUES!

No, I read that as "then guy gives them the second story, the true one, and as the investigators wanted to know, purely, why the ship sank, neither story helped with that so they went with the tiger story rather than besmirch the dead people with what they did to survive which would help nobody but would distress the relatives of the dead people...

OK BACK TO THE NEWS

11 noms?