Life of Pi

"Life of Pi" isn't only beautifully shot, it's the kind of story that devastates you emotionally, leaves you with tears of sadness but also uplifts your spirits and makes you cheer. Told In flashback, it's the story of Piscine "Pi" Patel (Suraj Sharma), who survived a shipwreck  Spoiler alert - click to reveal textwhich cost the life of his entire family. He drifted at sea, surviving through ingenuity on a life boat for 227 days. With a Bengal tiger. A Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

While the premise alone gets you ready for a story that will be at once incredible and unbelievable, what you can't predict is how smart the movie is. There is a long stretch of the film that is almost solely dedicated to Pi's religious beliefs and how he becomes a better, richer person by adopting different customs and making a real spiritual identity for himself. I found it to be wonderfully insightful. Not only because we hardly ever see anyone in a movie acknowledge that they believe in something (unless It's in one of those often hammy faith-based films) but because I think it will inspire a lot of people to look beyond the dogma that they've been taught and learn to accept or at least look into other faiths. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but that’s what this movie does to you. Although the film never feels preachy it feels bold and it's really refreshing to see a film that admits that its main character has faith in a higher being; it helps him feel like a real person (and also helps you believe he could survive being shipwrecked by himself)

The film isn't all about being serious and somber though; there are a lot of funny and whimsical moments and these not only help make the character feel genuine (because we all have at least a couple of weird and funny stories that are so wonderful their believability is questionable) but it also helps set up the ending of the film. It will leave you wondering in what you believe in yourself when it comes to stories that are so incredible they have to be true. I think you can tell a lot about a person based on how they ultimately interpret the story. Without giving anything away, I'm the kind of person that believes in the  Spoiler alert - click to reveal text"happier" version rather than the other one. I hope that isn't too vague for the people out there who have seen the film.

The special effects aren't always perfect, but most of the time it doesn't just go for realism, it goes for breath-taking visuals (credits to Ang Lee) and really, I think it's inevitable In any movie where animals are present that you're going to see a few seams because deep down in your lizard brain, you are looking for those imperfects to reassure yourself that they didn't actually have a man-eating tiger THAT close to an actor. I say the special effects aren't perfect, but that's like 1% of the time. For the most part, this is a completely convincing and breathtaking movie.

On the big screen or on the small screen "Life of Pi" is too intense and frightening for small children (12 and up would be better) but it's a beautiful film about a story that will really get you thinking and affect you emotionally. I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend it to. (Theatrical version on the big screen, January 22, 2013)