A gem of a film from Ang Lee

Film review: Life of Pi (PG)
Running time 120 minutes
Rating:****
Having been terrorised as a child by a ferocious ginger tom cat that lived in our airing cupboard, I have always been in awe of the cold savagery in the eyes of nearly all felines.
Thus, if presented with the scenario of being stranded in a small boat with a fully-grown Bengal tiger, I think the choice of tiger teeth or tiger shark teeth would be one to consider deeply.
The big-cat-in-a-boat situation faces one Pi Patel, a young boy travelling with his parents and their zoo from India to Canada. Sadly, the ship in which they are travelling meets with disaster, leaving Pi (the reason for the name is too complex to deal with here) in the boat.
The film of the 2001 award-winning book by Yann Martel, magically merges fantasy with adventure, and tension with romance, largely through the sensitive handling of director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain).
The special effects may be a little wonky at times (Pi’s uncle looks strangely out of proportion) but nothing can diminish the wonder of the story, told in flashback by the adult Pi.
As the boat drifts around the Pacific, Pi and the tiger – called Richard Parker (also taking too long to explain) – find that they need each other to survive. Initially, there were other animals in the boat, a wounded zebra, a mournful orang-utang and a sly hyena, but they are doomed.
An encounter with a strange floating island, populated by thousands of meerkats, also strengthens the pair’s bond, until they eventually hit dry land. But the real point of the book, and the film, is not an adventure story, but a voyage through first a dream and then a nightmare.
The acting, by Suraj Sharma and Irrfan Khan as the young and adult Pi respectively, is superlative, and may well feature in Baftas or Oscars shortly – as indeed should the film as a whole.
The opening scenes, in Pondicherry, India, evoke all the colour, drama and taste of the sub-continent while dealing with the racial and religious contradictions through the eyes of a boy.
This is a beautiful, gem of a film, where a great director takes the words of a story and brings them to life in colour, and deeply-meaningful images. It would probably get an award now, if the audience in the satisfyingly-full cinema had their vote. It even got a ripple of applause at the end – virtually unheard of these days.
Life of Pi is a real treat.