Warning: mildish spoilers.
Read the book and loved it, so yes, I was dubious about Life of Pi the movie for a long time, mostly because all the trailers just showed Pi and the tiger together in the lifeboat. If there were no other animals, what was the point? And the trailer also seemed so beautiful. Too beautiful. And maybe a bit too soft and feel-goody. I was thinking about not seeing this movie because I didn't want to go to that not as good as the book place, or launch into a how dare they (bloody Hollywood!) change the whole point of the story tirade.Then I read reviews which mentioned other animals in the lifeboat and praised the way Ang Lee kept the core of Yann Martel's book intact, so off I went to the movies to make up my own mind about it.
I wasn't, it soon became apparent, the only one who'd been deceived by the trailers. It all started well enough with Pi's idyllic childhood and all those gorgeous shots of the adorable zoo animals they showed in the trailer. Lots of oohs and aahs and squeals filled the theatre because, well, there were children at the session. Small children of the just-past-your-knees age group that gets seriously frightened when tigers start doing, well you know, the sorts of things you expect tigers to do. Sensitive souls who acutely feel the pain of distressed animals on a movie screen. Protected tots who are not yet hardened to the realities of what being a carnivore entails. Parents began casting worried glances at each other. A couple in the row in front of us were constantly comforting their little, little, little girl, covering her eyes or explaining that it would all be fine (which was rather annoying for the rest of us). Why they didn't just leave when it became obvious this was not your average Disney boy-and-wild-animal-pal film, I'm not sure.It was easy to tell that I, having read the book, was viewing the film differently than a good 95% of today's audience. If that sounds a bit condescending, what I mean is that this time round, I knew how the story was going to end while most of the people in the cinema were obviously expecting something else and accepting the film on face value, so they were in fact having the experience I had when I first read the book.
So really, I suppose the lovely trailer full of cute animals served a function in that it brought people who had not read the book to the film in the state of innocence/ignorance necessary to go with the unfolding of Pi's tale.
Pity about the traumatised kiddies though.
*Drats, my pictures for this post won't upload and I haven't got time to muck around. I'll try again later.
**13/1-13 - I still can't upload pictures from my computer (I hope this gets fixed soon), but I found a way to circumvent the system, he he he.
3 comments:
Oh, this is so interesting! I guess I can't go completely into spoiler-land. but after I saw trailers some moths ago for this beautiful-looking film, I decided to read the book, and did so in the innocent way you refer to.
Once I'd come to the ending, the part where Pi is interviewed, I said I would never, never go to see the film.
Do I gather from what you say that at the end of the film it becomes unclear in the same way as it did in the book? (Don't want to say more than that, for fear of spoilers.)
I don't know anyone else who has seen it, so can't ask them?
Didn't mean to put a question mark at the end of that last comment.
Yep, the ending is the same as in the book, although, as I said, having read the book,if you do go to see it, you too will watch the movie differently. You can't return to your previous state of innocence.
It's funny how 'Life of Pi' is one of those few works that people seem to go out of their way to not spoil for others, even all these years after it was first published. That's true respect for storytelling.
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