Ang Lee’s faithful adapatation of Yann Martel’s book is a
feast for the eyes and for the soul, but Martel owes much to the Brazilian
writer who first put a boy in a boat with a big cat.
Life of Pi, the movie, is a beautiful piece of cinema. Ang
Lee’s version of Canadian writer Yann Martel’s 2001 book is a wonder to behold,
especially in 3D. Bright sunrises, fluorescent whales, deep blue seas - and
that tiger. Suraj Sharma does a tremendous job as the boy in the boat, having
to act opposite a tiger who was never there until post-production. The visual
effects for this movie take the art to a new level, and that is sure to be
recognized come awards season.
The story takes us to a very primal place and has a
spiritual undercurrent that may surprise moviegoers who have not read the book.
Had Ang Lee based his movie on the original story that begat Life of Pi, a 1981
novel by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar called Max and the Cats, he would have shot a teenage Jewish boy adrift in
a boat with a jaguar after a shipwreck, going from Nazi Germany to Brazil.
Martel has acknowledged in his book that Scliar’s story inspired him, and
despite calls of plagiarism, Scliar (who died in 2011) never took legal action
against the Canadian writer as the stories’ similarities end with the boy in
the boat with the big cat. In his book, Scliar chronicles the life story of Max
Schmidt and his relationships with several felines, which symbolize his
authoritarian father, Nazism, and his adaptation to Brazilian soil.
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