Life Of Pi

I've just sat down to watch the film "The Life Of Pi" and thought it might be an interesting idea to write this blog whilst watching it. If you haven't seen the film and don't want to know what happens then I suggest you stop reading this blog now as there will be quite a lot of spoilers through the main part of the post.

I have to admit I was a bit sceptical about watching The Life Of Pi, and for quite a while I thought I had been right. For what seemed like the first half an hour all we saw were shots of various animals in a zoo, none of which were doing much at all. We were then introduced to a boy named after a swimming pool. But that wasn't his only claim to fame, oh no, he could also recite the number Pi, after which he nicknamed himself, to an unbelievable number of decimal places.

It has improved now though. A plot has started to develop as we are shown the child growing up. The adult version of Pi continues to tell the tale of his childhood, interrupted far too frequently by unnecessary, but stunning panoramas. Pi and his family have boarded a boat, bound for Canada, and the real story has begun. If the film had started now very little would have been missed, other than Pi falling in love right before he had to leave, which I'm assuming was foreshadowing something due to its complete lack of relevance to the rest of the film.

The boat has just been hit by a massive storm. Pi is left on his own, stranded on a lifeboat after a tranquillised zebra, rather comically, stumbled onto the tiny wooden structure, dropping it into the rough seas. Cue dramatic shots of raging water and grey skies. At least the film is getting interesting now.

I've just watched an orang-utan, a zebra and a hyena have a fight and I didn't think it could get any more surreal but now a tiger, named Richard Parker due to a clerical error, has joined in and it's becoming a free for all.

Skipping past a section in which Pi comes perilously close to death in almost every imaginable way, gets chased off his boat by Richard Parker and hit by another storm, he has now reached an island and quite possibly the strangest part of the film so far. The island is covered in meerkats; that sounds like an exaggeration but I am being very literal, it is like the crowd at a One Direction but with meerkats instead of people. It's a shame we've not heard from adult Pi in a while.

He's back! Adult Pi has done some more narrating and we're now seeing the weirdest bit, I know I just said it but this is even weirder. It turns out that the island is carnivorous and had eaten it's last inhabitant. Delightful.

Yay, Pi has been found. He's reached a desert island, not man-eating this time, and has been carried to safety by a group of locals. Surprise, surprise, Richard Parker has left Pi like the cold-hearted animal he really is and adult Pi is getting a little teary-eyed just thinking about it. Typical tigers eh?

I think we are coming to the end of the film now and Pi is being questioned by the owners of the ship that sank back at the start of the film. Pi describes, in detail, everything that has happened but the interviewers don't believe him. This is because he said that an orang-utan had floated through the sea on some bananas and everyone knows bananas can't float. Honestly.

We've finally reached the end of the film and adult Pi finishes his story just as his wife arrives home, and you'll never guess what... She's not the girl from India that he fell in love with right before he left. How disappointing. I guess I was wrong about that, but at least he named his daughter after her. And that's the end, a far-fetched but entertaining film that, despite not being my favourite film, is one that I quite enjoyed. Adult Pi finished the film by saying there are two versions of every story and the true one is only the one we choose to believe. That's an interesting statement to think about.

That's all for this week,

Adam