Finally saw this last night - it mysteriously reappeared at the local Busan cinema, just for two weekend showings!
Am not quite sure what I think of it, let alone about it, as yet. It definitely has some lovely visuals going for it, and the main character is portrayed convincingly by both his younger and older on-screen selves (Ayush Tandon, Suraj Sharma [him on the boat] and Irrfan Khan, respectively). The first part of the film is quite lovely - especially the tale of how he became known as Pi, and the amusing sequences around religion and his desire to follow (at least) three of them... However, the 'main' part of the film - the story that is meant to make us 'believe in god' - is rather more problematic, I think...
Whether or not the main tale is Pi's creation - something to blot out the horrors of the tale that involves murder and cannibalism amongst and between humans - I'm not very comfortable with the use and representations of other-than-human animals involved. On an obvious level, it's understandable why Pi might wish to blot out what 'really' happened if his 'second' story, the one involving other humans being on the lifeboat with him, and as such this reading of the tale 'works'. It's also understandable that he uses animals in this way, I suppose - to represent aspects and elements of human 'nature' and behaviour - and this may work better (and less problematically?) in writing than on-screen, I suppose (although I'm not convinced of that either; I'm reading the novel, though - which might bring some clarity there. Or it might not!). However, the reduction is not very pleasant, I don't think - not to the animals, anyway! I had kind of hoped to see filmic representations of them that said something about animals-as-persons, not as comments on humans, as it were. And in that sense, the film (the story?) was very wanting.
If the tiger was 'really' on the boat, then it's inexplicable and a shame that such a potentially interesting and animal-human relationship focused tale couldn't find more interesting ways to develop the relationship: it seemed that Pi's father's characterization of Richard Parker was too well ingrained in Pi's head to leave room for a more helpful approach to sharing space with a tiger than the one(s) attempted by Pi. If the tiger was more of a metaphor, or imagined self, then the problem was, I think, even greater: what an odd way to imagine a fellow creature in a shared - horrendously frightening! - situation. Either way, the characterization (caricature-ization) of Richard Parker as relentlessly agrressive seems limited, at best. (I'm not suggesting tigers aren't carnivrous and potetially very dangerous companions at sea(!); but this IS fiction, so something more could well be investigated - and needn't be at complete odds with a 'real' tiger, either - as contemporary work on human-animal relations as well as other-than-human animal behaviour bears out.)
I was left wondering why Pi didn't comfort the zebra, didn't batter the hyena(!), and wasn't more wlecoming to the orangutan, for sure. And while the confusion of the terrifying and death-threatening situation does much to 'explain' all this - as does the situation of its perhaps anyway being a metaphor for/to repress what 'really' happened - this doesn't detract from the way in which the story does nothing to really challenge stereotypical images of other-than-humans as defined largely by theor species characteristics, rather than by situations and relatiosnhips. So for me, it was limited when it could have done so much more. But yes, some beautiful imagery - especially at sea, and also on the 'floating island' - and some nice elements around Pi missing Richard Parker, and his feelings of being let down when he's abandoned by the tiger, and/as a part of him self.
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