Life of Pi

A film that begins in India and takes place on the ocean. Pi grows up in Pondicherry. His family runs a zoo and the boy is drawn to three religions at once. The family decides to move to Canada. The animals are loaded onto the ship too. The ship sinks in a storm. Pi wakes in a lifeboat; with him are a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. Before long only the tiger is left. From there the film lasts two hundred and twenty-seven days. Collecting water, catching fish, building a raft to keep his distance, and finding food for the tiger. What the narrative is interested in is not survival but story: at the end the film offers two accounts and does not say which is true; the question is which you choose to believe. The second account is given in a room, in one long speech, with no images at all. The tiger is entirely digital. An animal was filmed for reference, but almost every frame on screen was made by computer. So is the water. The ocean sequences were shot in a vast wave tank built in Taiwan and the horizon was added afterwards. The film was designed for three-dimensional presentation and the depth is used inside the narrative; it was taken as one of the best uses of the technology. The source is a novel by Yann Martel. The book was considered unfilmable for years and several directors left the project. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Director, cinematography and visual effects. Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall and Tabu are in the cast. Ang Lee directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes visually ambitious films that leave you thinking. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear answer; the narrative deliberately does not decide.