My wife and I went to see Life of Pi this week. Such an interesting movie! I was a religious studies major in university, so I love this stuff. I read the book a few years ago and couldn't put it down.
If you do not want to read all this, do me a favour and at least the paragraph that has an asterisk at the beginning.
Spoiler alert....
It's cinematically well done with some incredible CGI shots. It's nice to have some humour, and with the book written by a Canadian, some Canadian references too!
Thematically, there's a lot of symbolism in the movie that makes you think. It's essentially the story of a man who spent his childhood trying to find God. The boy finds God through Vishnu in Hinduism, Christ in Christianity, and Allah in Islam (Pi is a Catholic-Hindu). When he is shipwrecked as a teenager and stuck on a raft with a tiger, he cries out to 'God' in both praise and anger.
I have seen reviews about Pi's struggle as being similar to Job's, where everything goes wrong and yet he still calls on God. In that sense, very cool.
Lots of thought provoking parts. My favourite two were when his family was having dinner, and his mother says faith is important to understand what's inside you...that made me think. The other is at the end of the movie, when he tells the writer that the hardest part was that he never got to say goodbye to Richard Parker (the tiger). And you realize he never got to say goodbye to his family either...
I enjoy thought-provoking stories, although it can be hard to grasp the full interpretation. However perhaps that's much of the allure - figuring out what it means, especially when everyone has a different interpretation of the movie and the symbolism. It's fun to discuss afterward.
*I will say this one important point. In both the book and the movie, I got the sense that 'we are all worshipping the same God, just through different means'. I have heard that statement from so many people from other faiths that I've had discussions with. It's part of our attempt in North America to be all-inclusive and politically correct, but the straight-out truth is we do not worship the same God. We worship very different g/Gods, and even a brief understanding of each religion will tell you that. Christ is not 330 million gods that Hinduism has. Christ is not a God that calls for war with non-believers (Islam). Christ was not looking to escape suffering by seeking enlightenment as Buddha was - Christ left the enlightenment that is heaven to come specifically to suffer for us (Buddhism). Christ fulfilled 613 prophesies in the Old Testament (Judaism). Just a few, short examples of how we definitely do not all worship the same God.
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and enjoyed the thought process it brought on. I'd easily recommend it - knowing what you're getting into first though...
And if I was to really nail down one highlight, it might have been the lady sitting in front of me who would gasp - and sometimes scream - whenever anything dramatic happened. It was distractingly amusing.
If you do not want to read all this, do me a favour and at least the paragraph that has an asterisk at the beginning.
Spoiler alert....
It's cinematically well done with some incredible CGI shots. It's nice to have some humour, and with the book written by a Canadian, some Canadian references too!
Thematically, there's a lot of symbolism in the movie that makes you think. It's essentially the story of a man who spent his childhood trying to find God. The boy finds God through Vishnu in Hinduism, Christ in Christianity, and Allah in Islam (Pi is a Catholic-Hindu). When he is shipwrecked as a teenager and stuck on a raft with a tiger, he cries out to 'God' in both praise and anger.
I have seen reviews about Pi's struggle as being similar to Job's, where everything goes wrong and yet he still calls on God. In that sense, very cool.
Lots of thought provoking parts. My favourite two were when his family was having dinner, and his mother says faith is important to understand what's inside you...that made me think. The other is at the end of the movie, when he tells the writer that the hardest part was that he never got to say goodbye to Richard Parker (the tiger). And you realize he never got to say goodbye to his family either...
I enjoy thought-provoking stories, although it can be hard to grasp the full interpretation. However perhaps that's much of the allure - figuring out what it means, especially when everyone has a different interpretation of the movie and the symbolism. It's fun to discuss afterward.
*I will say this one important point. In both the book and the movie, I got the sense that 'we are all worshipping the same God, just through different means'. I have heard that statement from so many people from other faiths that I've had discussions with. It's part of our attempt in North America to be all-inclusive and politically correct, but the straight-out truth is we do not worship the same God. We worship very different g/Gods, and even a brief understanding of each religion will tell you that. Christ is not 330 million gods that Hinduism has. Christ is not a God that calls for war with non-believers (Islam). Christ was not looking to escape suffering by seeking enlightenment as Buddha was - Christ left the enlightenment that is heaven to come specifically to suffer for us (Buddhism). Christ fulfilled 613 prophesies in the Old Testament (Judaism). Just a few, short examples of how we definitely do not all worship the same God.
All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and enjoyed the thought process it brought on. I'd easily recommend it - knowing what you're getting into first though...
And if I was to really nail down one highlight, it might have been the lady sitting in front of me who would gasp - and sometimes scream - whenever anything dramatic happened. It was distractingly amusing.
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