Life of Pi - Trailer

When I read Life of Pi about 2 or 3 years ago, already aware of rumours of a film adaptation, I tried to picture what it would be like on the big screen. I couldn't really imagine how it would be possible, given the sheer difficultly and impracticality of many aspects of the novel from the actual filming in the middle of the ocean itself, to working with a tiger to play Richard Parker and other parts such as the shipwreck and the mysterious island of meerkats.The majority of the novel features Pi stuck at sea on a tiny lifeboat, half delirious from thirst and malnutrition- it hardly seems the most cinematically engrossing of things. But then I'd thought the same about other less plot driven novels, ones which at first seem like they'd be difficult to adapt, and then been surprised at how well they transferred- some of my favourite examples being The Virgin Suicides (1999), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) and Orlando (1992).


So I'm going to look forward to this with high hopes mainly because I'm intrigued to see how they do it. I really enjoyed the book and how it was able to take such a surreal concept and turn it into something so engaging as well as present an enlightening look at Pi's own religious discoveries, his childhood in India as well as offering a look at the nature of religious allegory. It couldn't be in better hands as well, considering director Ang Lee's track record. 


Of course, there's the question of how they actually created much of the unusual imagery and it seems they've relied on an abundance of CGI. Personally I'm not a big fan of it when it's overused and I can't help thinking how artificial it looks when watching this trailer. But this is hardly Transformers (2007); it all looks very subtle and it seems a lot of effort was put into making this more aesthetically beautiful than realistic, perhaps to build on the fantastical aspects of the novel. It reminded me a lot of the look of The Lovely Bones (2009), another seemingly troublesome novel to adapt and indeed that film was more flawed than I'd wished, being too much in debt to its outlandish visuals. This trailer focuses almost entirely on imagery as its big selling point and so I guess it wouldn't make a huge amount of sense to those who have no idea what Life of Pi is about as explanation and even dialogue are sidelined.


I trust Lee and screenwriter David Magee will still focus just as much on the book's first half looking at Pi's spiritual and religious experimentation as well as retaining the second half of Pi's stranding at sea as the possible testing of his faith in God and its parallels to the allegories of religious prophets. However it ends up, this trailer has gotten me excited, I anticipate it has the potential to be something pretty special.