NOVEL-MOVIE BUNDLE REVIEW: Life of Pi (Written by Yann Martel, Directed by Ang Lee)

            So! Here we are again, unavoidably late at night (12:24 AM) and I’m writing a review.

            No, that is not why it’s going to be scathing. (On all accounts, I’m a night owl [because of course ALL owls come out in the daytime, being nocturnal; why is that even the term???].)
            Many of you have probably heard about this next book/movie that’s come out and was nominated for—and received, no less—several Oscars. At the first moment of seeing some of the surreal scenes in this movie, I was enchanted. But that was because I hadn’t seen the entire thing. To quote my brother, “Yep, I’m tripping on acid.” Kind of like these:

            Considering this is a book/movie review (considering they were pretty much the same), I’ll flip back and forth between them sometimes.

            What is this book/movie I’m reviewing? Why, none other than Life of Pi, by Yann Martel!

            Now. I have to admit I wanted to read this book SO BADLY. Like I said, I had seen the Oscar snippets—I was watching the Oscars for one reason only: To see Les Miserables smoke everything (unfortunately, it didn’t, but it should have, EXCEPT for Tommy Lee Jones winning Best Supporting Actor, which also DIDN’T happen, and Daniel Day Lewis winning Best Actor, which made me happy because he was absolutely amazing in Lincoln).

            Anyway!

            Life of Pi looked interesting to me. The snippets had the kind of stuff I like. Strange, etherealness that melts into your sublime consciousness and makes you think, “Wow, the world still has some wonder left in it.” Well, this thought only came about because I hadn’t seen the whole movie and/or read the book. My disenchantment didn’t hit me hard. But I did sit back and wonder, “Why did this win the Man Booker Award? Or any Oscar?”

            To begin, the plot moves a lot like this:

            Yep. And according to Cinemasins onYouTube, the sloth shown at the beginning of the movie is epic foreshadowing of the plot’s speed. (Baahaha) Indeed, the plot is slow. S-L-O-W. SLOOOOOOOOOW.

            In the book, the entire thing is broken up into three parts: (1) Pi’s religious experience, which is muddled and confused and makes absolutely no sense at all, (2) Pi’s “epic” tale of survival on the Pacific Ocean (which is really boring and reads more like a survival manual than a novel) after the Tsimtsum sinks (which is never explained), and (3) Pi’s relating of the events to the Japanese officials, where he tells the two versions of his story, the one with people and the one with animals.

            Now, I don’t care that the animals were a part of it. I love animals. I don’t love how they’re exploited as some kind of “coping mechanism” that Pi uses to relate a “more palatable” tale of his survival. And here’s why that don’t fly.

1)      Richard Parker can in no way represent Pi.

            This doesn’t make SENSE. Sure, the whole “survival instinct like a tiger’s” or whatever can be brought into it—as a lame excuse for the imagery—but how do you explain the “taming” of the tiger? The aggressiveness that kept Pi off the boat almost the entire time? The holes in the tarpaulin during the storm? The tiger poop? The teaching of Richard Parker to jump through hoops on the carnivorous island (which, in itself, makes no sense)? Too many holes riddle this “plot” in order for it to be plausible. Another thing: The story of how Richard Parker got his name doesn’t fit either, because this especially “amazing” tiger that is obviously so awesome to Pi and so important it has a backstory, is NEVER mentioned before Pi gets the tiger in the lifeboat after the Tsimtsum sinks. Another tiger is mentioned, a DIFFERENT one, but not Richard Parker. If Richard Parker was so important, he would have been present throughout the book instead of lodged into one monstrous epic of flat and tasteless proportions, then suddenly and randomly disappear without so much as a backward glance at Pi. (This sudden disappearance also debunks some theories that Richard Parker is supposed to represent God, because God would never abandon His true children; see Deuteronomy 31:6 and Matthew 28:20, and God was silent when Christ was on the cross because a. He couldn't bear to see the sins of the world on His Son's shoulders, and b. the willing sacrifice of Christ had to be completed).

2)      The hyena—who represented the French cook—was dead far, FAR before Pi heard the French guy talking to him. I mean, WAY far before.

Yeah, I don’t get this. Suddenly—and randomly, might I add—Pi starts hearing the French cook talk to him and thinks it’s Richard Parker. However, the French cook wouldn’t have been able to talk to Pi anyway; not only because he “wasn’t in the boat,” but because the hyena who represented him was killed WAY BEFORE THIS CHAPTER. Richard Parker tore it apart and Pi threw the body overboard. Then out of the blue we have the French cook-hyena talking to Pi and Richard Parker killing the French cook-hyena and eating him until he’s nothing but a bloody, hollowed-out ribcage? Pi says himself that the cook-hyena was thrown overboard with the gaff and was stabbed, not eaten. Yeah, no. In what way does that make sense?

3)      The animals in no way represent each of these people’s nationalities, or even remotely come from their home nations.

And don’t give me that “they represent the person’s inner animal, or id,” or whatever bullcrap like that. For instance, how does a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg become a zebra? How can we base this person’s character into an animal symbolism if we know, oh, say, NOTHING about this person? Zebras are not helpless animals. In fact, its pattern and coat should have confused the hyena at first. Instead, what happens at first is the hyena completely overlooks the wounded, bleeding, helpless animal that is its natural prey, putting the characteristics of this animal way out of the zone of normalcy.

And why would the hyena represent the French cook? Granted, he was a “monster” or whatever, but again; the only basis we have for this fact is that Pi says so at the end, when he retells the story with people instead of animals. If we were to take this fact seriously at all, we would have to know FOR A SOLID AND PROVEN FACT that the cook was a terrible man. (Even in the movie he’s just a bit of a douche, and not a total freak.) How can someone we’ve barely even been introduced to take on such a dramatic and disgusting transformation? Worse, how can an author do this and expect his readers to believe him?

Also, zebras live in Africa, Orangutans come from Borneo and Sumatra, and spotted hyenas (the only hyena species on the entire planet) comes from Africa as well. So…somebody point out the sense here. (And if Pi’s mom was supposed to be so tough and everything, so forceful and loving at once, why wasn’t she a wolf or something? And if she wasn’t seen leaving the Tsimtsum and the entire lower deck flooded before his parents could get out, how did she escape?)

Now. Here are some more points I need to make before I can say some final statements.

First, can we all say, “medically impossible for tears to cure blindness?” Salt does not cause blindness in the eyes, nor can it be cleared by tears when the tear duct is not producing tears. In Pi’s state of severe dehydration, one in which he couldn’t even produce saliva, how on earth would he be able to produce enough tears to cure his blindness? (Can someone scream really loudly, “TERRIBLE, CONFUSINGLY-ATTEMPTED ALLEGORY?”)

And here’s another thing. If there were so many rations on board, why did the cook resort to cannibalism immediately? (IF that’s the story you wish to believe.) How is this even remotely okay to think of as “symbolic?” It doesn’t make any sense! Sure, cannibalism happens on shipwrecks and life rafts and survival stuff like that, but not when the rations are still fully intact! (I mean, look at the Donner Party!) And don’t tell me the cook didn’t know the locker was under the tarpaulin because he worked on the ship.

Oh, another point. Yann Martel is always saying that the book isn’t an allegory, but the way that people are interpreting it, and the way he presents it, all fit the definition of “allegory,” and the Oxford definition, no less. Here, let me even give it to you:

Definition of allegory

noun (plural allegories)

·              a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one: Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the spiritual journey

·    a symbol.

And according to these sites, you can interpret some things certain ways as, guess what? ALLEGORICAL. Thank you, Yann Martel, for LYING TO THE WORLD.

Overall, the movie and the book had pretty much the same elements—except for the movie having those trippy, pointless scenes of weirdness. At the end of the book/movie we’re left with a hole-riddled plot, a character we can’t relate to because he’s so messed up himself, two stories that don’t make any sense at all, pointless musings about religions that don’t and never will mix, and a really long, slow-moving story about a boy in a lifeboat, because there’s nothing else going on, really.

Life of Pi gets two turned pages out of ten. (One for being crappy, the other for allowing me the opportunity to say “Richard Parker” in an Indian accent.)