Life of Pi (3D)
I was initially reluctant to go and see this movie directed by Ang Lee ("Who wants to watch two hours of a tiger in a boat?") but went along as friends were keen. Particularly in 3D, the cinematography is stunning, as are the special effects (including a very realistic and progressively emaciated Bengal Tiger). Apparently filmed in a wave tank in Taiwan, the water ranged from being whipped up into a fearful storm strong enough to sink a cargo ship through glassy still reflecting the sky and the stars to clear and luminescent at night. As well as the tiger, a zebra, hyena and orangutan end up on the boat, and we see fish, sharks, dolphins, jelly fish and a massive whale in the water. Some scenes dissolve into the kind of fantasy that you would expect to see with hallucinations.
Filmed in India, Taiwan and Montreal, the film maps the journey of Pi as a child and then a teenager in India and his family's fateful trip (with their zoo animals) to a new life in Canada. The cargo ship strikes 'the perfect storm' above the Mariana Trench and sinks. Pi ends up in a lifeboat and drifts across the Pacific for over 270 days until he washes up on a beach in Mexico.
At times it is a deeply spiritual journey, with the young Pi exploring three religions simultaneously - his birthright Hindu, Christianity and Islam. At two pivotal points in the story, Pi sees God in the storm, and in the second entreats the tiger to do the same. The young man who plays the shipwrecked Pi does an outstanding job in a very challenging (and wet) role.
Until almost the end of the movie, I was viewing it as a bit of an improbable fantasy, but one for which I had enabled my "willing suspension of disbelief".
I found the conclusion to the movie quite jarring. Japanese investigators come to interview Pi, the only survivor of the sinking of the cargo ship, whilst he is recovering in hospital in Mexico. They consider his story about the tiger and other animals and the carnivorous island complete with Meerkats in the middle of the Pacific quite improbable and ask him for the true story. He then tells a far more brutish tale, of being in the lifeboat with a gentle Buddhist and his mother and the evil cook (a gorgeous cameo by Gerard Depardieu). The Buddist dies and then his mother is murdered by the cook and Pi then kills the cook. The author listening to Pi's story in Montreal says "so the zebra was your mother, the orangutan was the Buddist, the cook was the hyena and you were the tiger?". Perhaps it was the Director's (and novelist's intention), but I was left wondering which version of the story to believe. Pi asks the author which story he prefers, and of course he says the one with the tiger.
After this point (and afterwards) for me the visual wonder of the movie became clouded by questions. Was the floating island of mangroves with Meerkats and aquifers which were fresh water by day and acidic at night, killing the fish within, really carnivorous, consuming the last human inhabitant, or was it merely a hallucination? Do bananas float (yes, experimentally verified!) and could the orangutan have arrived at the lifeboat on a raft of bananas? Was the zebra who swam out under the water when Pi opened a door between compartments to try to save his family while the ship was sinking really a zebra or was this an avatar for Pi's mother? If this was so, why would he agree with the author that his mother was the orangutan? How did the four animals get out of their cages on the cargo decks to end up in the lifeboat? If it was a fake story, why did Pi get teary at the mention that the tiger, Richard Parker, did not turn around for a lingering last glance before disappearing into the Mexican jungle? If there was a tiger in the jungle, surely this would have come to the attention of the media at some point? If there was really no tiger on the lifeboat, did Pi actually construct a little raft to keep himself at some distance from the boat and then lose all his supplies due to environmental disturbances? What about the consequences of exposure and malnutrition? (Apart from matted hair and a few ribs showing he looked remarkably well after nine months at sea.) How did he end up in Canada? Was the Indian girl he married the one he left behind in India as a teenager?
If all these seeds of doubt had not been sown, I would have found the movie much more enjoyable. I did not feel that this self-destructive denouement added anything to the storyline and indeed detracted from all the good work that had gone before. Perhaps it is meant to be a sort of morality play contrasting survival against all the odds with the darkness that lurks within, where the protagonist must reflect on that age-old question, "what is truth?".
The music score is wonderful, weaving in elements of Indian musical traditions. The 3D presentation enhanced the lavish cinematography, but I am sure it would still have been very presentable in 2D. I did find it a bit tiresome wearing the glasses for that length of time and it was disappointing that there was only one Hoyts cinema in the whole of Melbourne showing the 2D version. (There is a $3 premium for 3D films and an extra $1 for the 3D glasses if you do not have them already.)
How to Train your Dragon
This charming feel-good animated movie was just as enjoyable on a second viewing.
The basic premise involves a fearsome tribe of Vikings at war with dragons, the chief's nerdy son Hiccup who befriends an injured Night Fury dragon (and turns out to be somewhat of a 'dragon whisperer'), his friends including the fiesty Astrid, and a terrifying massive prehistoric dragon who is holding all the other dragons in thrall and forcing them to steal food from the Vikings in order to feed him. The youngsters and the dragons save the day, the large dragon is defeated and from thenceforth the Vikings and the dragons live happily ever after.
I haven't yet seen the two sequels that have been made, but look forward to doing so.
I was initially reluctant to go and see this movie directed by Ang Lee ("Who wants to watch two hours of a tiger in a boat?") but went along as friends were keen. Particularly in 3D, the cinematography is stunning, as are the special effects (including a very realistic and progressively emaciated Bengal Tiger). Apparently filmed in a wave tank in Taiwan, the water ranged from being whipped up into a fearful storm strong enough to sink a cargo ship through glassy still reflecting the sky and the stars to clear and luminescent at night. As well as the tiger, a zebra, hyena and orangutan end up on the boat, and we see fish, sharks, dolphins, jelly fish and a massive whale in the water. Some scenes dissolve into the kind of fantasy that you would expect to see with hallucinations.
Filmed in India, Taiwan and Montreal, the film maps the journey of Pi as a child and then a teenager in India and his family's fateful trip (with their zoo animals) to a new life in Canada. The cargo ship strikes 'the perfect storm' above the Mariana Trench and sinks. Pi ends up in a lifeboat and drifts across the Pacific for over 270 days until he washes up on a beach in Mexico.
At times it is a deeply spiritual journey, with the young Pi exploring three religions simultaneously - his birthright Hindu, Christianity and Islam. At two pivotal points in the story, Pi sees God in the storm, and in the second entreats the tiger to do the same. The young man who plays the shipwrecked Pi does an outstanding job in a very challenging (and wet) role.
Until almost the end of the movie, I was viewing it as a bit of an improbable fantasy, but one for which I had enabled my "willing suspension of disbelief".
I found the conclusion to the movie quite jarring. Japanese investigators come to interview Pi, the only survivor of the sinking of the cargo ship, whilst he is recovering in hospital in Mexico. They consider his story about the tiger and other animals and the carnivorous island complete with Meerkats in the middle of the Pacific quite improbable and ask him for the true story. He then tells a far more brutish tale, of being in the lifeboat with a gentle Buddhist and his mother and the evil cook (a gorgeous cameo by Gerard Depardieu). The Buddist dies and then his mother is murdered by the cook and Pi then kills the cook. The author listening to Pi's story in Montreal says "so the zebra was your mother, the orangutan was the Buddist, the cook was the hyena and you were the tiger?". Perhaps it was the Director's (and novelist's intention), but I was left wondering which version of the story to believe. Pi asks the author which story he prefers, and of course he says the one with the tiger.
After this point (and afterwards) for me the visual wonder of the movie became clouded by questions. Was the floating island of mangroves with Meerkats and aquifers which were fresh water by day and acidic at night, killing the fish within, really carnivorous, consuming the last human inhabitant, or was it merely a hallucination? Do bananas float (yes, experimentally verified!) and could the orangutan have arrived at the lifeboat on a raft of bananas? Was the zebra who swam out under the water when Pi opened a door between compartments to try to save his family while the ship was sinking really a zebra or was this an avatar for Pi's mother? If this was so, why would he agree with the author that his mother was the orangutan? How did the four animals get out of their cages on the cargo decks to end up in the lifeboat? If it was a fake story, why did Pi get teary at the mention that the tiger, Richard Parker, did not turn around for a lingering last glance before disappearing into the Mexican jungle? If there was a tiger in the jungle, surely this would have come to the attention of the media at some point? If there was really no tiger on the lifeboat, did Pi actually construct a little raft to keep himself at some distance from the boat and then lose all his supplies due to environmental disturbances? What about the consequences of exposure and malnutrition? (Apart from matted hair and a few ribs showing he looked remarkably well after nine months at sea.) How did he end up in Canada? Was the Indian girl he married the one he left behind in India as a teenager?
If all these seeds of doubt had not been sown, I would have found the movie much more enjoyable. I did not feel that this self-destructive denouement added anything to the storyline and indeed detracted from all the good work that had gone before. Perhaps it is meant to be a sort of morality play contrasting survival against all the odds with the darkness that lurks within, where the protagonist must reflect on that age-old question, "what is truth?".
The music score is wonderful, weaving in elements of Indian musical traditions. The 3D presentation enhanced the lavish cinematography, but I am sure it would still have been very presentable in 2D. I did find it a bit tiresome wearing the glasses for that length of time and it was disappointing that there was only one Hoyts cinema in the whole of Melbourne showing the 2D version. (There is a $3 premium for 3D films and an extra $1 for the 3D glasses if you do not have them already.)
How to Train your Dragon
This charming feel-good animated movie was just as enjoyable on a second viewing.
The basic premise involves a fearsome tribe of Vikings at war with dragons, the chief's nerdy son Hiccup who befriends an injured Night Fury dragon (and turns out to be somewhat of a 'dragon whisperer'), his friends including the fiesty Astrid, and a terrifying massive prehistoric dragon who is holding all the other dragons in thrall and forcing them to steal food from the Vikings in order to feed him. The youngsters and the dragons save the day, the large dragon is defeated and from thenceforth the Vikings and the dragons live happily ever after.
I haven't yet seen the two sequels that have been made, but look forward to doing so.
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