Life of Pi

Never, ever in my life I thought that such a simple story can be presented in such beautiful manner on-screen.  Life of Pi was special in more than one ways for me.

Firstly, it was the first movie, post-marriage, that I took Mrs Furobiker to - So it had to be exceptional, warna beta apni reputation ki to lag jati :P Pehli movie dikhai wo bhi kachra :D To safeguard myself, first of all, I filtered out all movies starring Shahrukh, Salman and Katrina for that matter. Well, first two in the list to remove all junk created in film industry and the last one purely because no girl likes Katrina, God knows why!

So what was left of the running movies for that week was Life of Pi.

It is the story of an Indian kid "Pi". Well, that was not his real name, but due to some shit name his parents kept, the guy started calling himself Pi, an abbreviation of his name. His original name was Piscine, a famous swimming pool in Paris. However, due to the similarity in pronunciation of Piscine and Pissing, he started calling himself Pi. :D

Pi's parents owned a zoo in India. But one day, pi's parents realized that to earn good money, you got to go to Videsh.

So this guy, Pi, was going to a foreign land on a ship with his family, and their whole zoo! And, as it happens with all the movies involving ships - there was a mishap! There was a huge sea storm, and by stroke of luck Pi was thrown in a life boat, with some animals while his whole family died in the shipwreck!

I can not to proper justice to the visual marvel that was presented to us in the next 40 or so minutes by writing about it on this blog! It was a visual treat, pure bliss to watch the journey of Pi and the animals in the small boat, till they reach a landmass at the end of the movie!

During the journey, they encounter some really beautiful and surprising elements of mother nature - thousands of flying fish, a sea full of glowing jellyfish, a carnivorous island and what not! And as most of the critics have stated, this movie was more of a food for thought than a visual treat. You could slowly see the Royal Bengal Tiger and Pi adjusting to each other during their long ordeal. The way animals stuck with Pi on the boat fight/adjust with each other, and eat each other if needed. It shows the how people react in life threatening situations. And how Pi helps the biggest threat to his life - the tiger - when its life was in danger!

But what happens in the end, one could never imagine! Pi gives a hint that this story might not be true at all. Maybe Pi replaced the normal humans with animals just to bring out the deeper meaning of situations and characters! Those three minutes just shake you out of the tumultuous journey of Pi involving computer imagery and emotional undertone, that kept you engrossed for the past two hours! You suddenly realize that you believe what the storyteller wants you to believe - maybe whole truth, maybe a bag full of euphemisms!

From what I have heard, the book "Life of Pi", on which the movie is based is even better. Also, the book does better justice to the second (rather original) story than the fantasized one.

I have ordered my copy from Flipkart. Lets see how the book fares. 

But, after a long time, I give a movie five out of five stars! Kudos!