Skip to main content

Life of Pi

I've read Life of Pi by Yann Martel 3 times, the last time being about a year ago. It easily makes it into my top ten list of all time favourite books. Well, top 5 actually. I didn't think it could ever be filmed successfully, so when Ang Lee's movie was released, of course I had to go and take a look just for curiosity's sake.

The film, as it turns out, is a triumph. Not only does it accomplish the difficult task of presenting the fantasy adventure of Pi's unlikely ocean voyage in an open lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger for company but it manages to present the philosophical undergirding which gives the novel such unsettling power.

Life of Pi is primarily about religion. Note: it is not a religious book but a book about religion.  A young boy who shares his name with a mathematical symbol survives a shipwreck and a long period alone in a lifeboat. At the end of the book the reader is presented with two different versions of his survival and invited not so much to choose which version is "true" but to judge which version is the better story. This is a metaphor, or perhaps better, an illustration of the way religious narrative works. A religion, suggests Martel, is a narrative which explains the universe and the human condition. It is a story which not only explains the existence of the universe but gives clues as to the universe's ultimate purpose and of our part in it. To ask of a religious narrative questions of mere facticity is to ask the wrong questions. To reduce the story of the universe to lists of facts and dates is not just unhelpful; it does injury to us by excluding, as a matter of course, all considerations of meaning.  So, at the start of the book Pi is portrayed as being simultaneously a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. In much the same way that the book gives two stories to account for Pi's survival, Pi is able to draw on 3 stories to explain the Universe.

The theme of story runs all the way through the book. There is the fanciful story of Pi's naming for example. There is a story of how Pi came to be interviewed and the book to be written. Stories interweave and nest inside each other like a Shakespearean play within a play. So the reader reads a story of a man writing a story in which he is told a story.... and who is reading ours, the reader's story? And who is writing it?

All of this philosophical complexity is contained in the book by the use of appendices and by editorial comment from the (fictional) 'author'. In the film it is handled by presenting quite lengthy conversations between the adult Pi and his interviewer. It's a technique which is potentially clumsy and intrusive but Ang Lee has pulled it off.

This is another movie to see in 3D if you have the option. The computer graphics are stunning: shots of sea and sky where the lighting and composition are perfect because they have been manufactured to be perfect; where weather and stars and sea and creatures can be manipulated as elements in a great work of art for their aesthetic and their metaphorical value. And despite this being such a profound and intelligent piece, both as book and film, it works very well also as an adventure story, nicely paced and visually pleasing.

Having seen The Hobbit only a few days before, this is a deeper, richer, better film; a work of art as opposed to an amusement. I will probably buy the DVD when it comes out as I suspect I will want to watch the film at least as often as I have read the book. 

Comments

Merv said…
Thanks. You have enhanced my appreciation of the movie ... and I totally agree.
Kate said…
You're the fifth person to recommend it, but the first who liked it for the same reasons that I liked the book. I really must go and see it while I can still in 3D.

From a literary point of view, (rather than a philosophical or spiritual), it reminded me a bit of John Fowles's 'The Magus'. Especially with the idea that there could be multiple endings. Have you ever read that book Kelvin?
Kelvin Wright said…
yes, several times. There is quite a similarity in the treatment of story/reality. There are two versions of the Magus. In the second edition Fowles changes the ending somewhat to try and make it less opaque. It is still a little baffling though. Or a lot baffling actually. But that's one of the things I like about the book, that it leaves you questioning and reeling.

I also like the French Lieutenant's Woman. It deals with similar themes, but in a more refined, literary way
Kelvin Wright said…
and the French Lieutenants Woman is very specific about the multiple ending thing. I also love the way that John Fowles wrote himself into the novel as both God and the Devil; a nice little theological touch from a heracleitan/pagan/agnostic like Fowles.
Anonymous said…
"To ask of a religious narrative questions of mere facticity is to ask the wrong questions."

Yes, but who is asking this? And one cannot seriously avoid asking, of Christianity and its principal religious rival, 'Did this person really exist? And did he really say these things? or do these things?' One can, I suppose, conceive of a kind of Buddhism without Siddhartha. But Christianity stands or falls on the truth of the testimony about Jesus.

"To reduce the story of the universe to lists of facts and dates is not just unhelpful; it does injury to us by excluding, as a matter of course, all considerations of meaning."
Agreed. But unless the Incarnation and the Resurrection really happened, then 'considerations of meaning' don't really mean much.

Brian
Kelvin Wright said…
Who is asking this? Certainly the church where I began my Christian walk; where I was told that if I didn't believe in Noah's flood then I couldn't be a Christian. In other words the only truth recognised was factul truth and if the Bible wasn't factually true in every detail it wasn't true at all.

It' an interesting question to ask youself, "if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, would that make any difference to my faith?" and before you answer, think of the first disciples, for whom Jesus had certainly not been raised and for whom he was not personal saviour and Lord. And yet they left their nets and followed. Followed whom and what and for why? And the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed was certainly not that he had died for your sins, because, obviously, he hadn't. So what was it? So in Jesus' early proclamation there was obviously some powerful considerations of meaning that were entirely independent of the resurrection, and given what his first disciples probably thought about him (and maybe what he thought of himself) of the incarnation as well.

If we go back to Life of Pi, the book doesn't proclaim a completely agnostic view of facts. So, there was a shipwreck, Pi survived and his family were drowned: in terms of the novel, these are "facts"but the story of how these things came to happen is not easily proven. So Jesus lived,died in the time of the procurator Pontius Pilate and his disciples reported powerful experiences of him after his death. These, as far as anything can have that claim, are historical facts. The religious narrative we have woven around these facts over the last 2 millennia are quite another matter.
liturgy said…
Thanks, as always, Kelvin.

Your comment, above, responding to Brian, helpfully expand your wonderful post. Like you, I love the book. And the film (and the 3D). This, and the Hobbit, are gifts, certainly to me, for preaching and teaching into this year. One of my constant problems is to shut up my theologising mind! In the Hobbit I wanted to "pause" and take notes!

Blessings

Bosco
Anonymous said…
'....think of the first disciples, for whom Jesus had certainly not been raised and for whom he was not personal saviour and Lord.'
Not YET is the decisive qualification. If Jesus hadn't risen from the dead, I don't think anyone would have written a 'gospel' - because there would be no Gospel. The Gospels are written after the event of the Resurrection.
"And yet they left their nets and followed. Followed whom and what and for why?"
Peter answers that (if you trust the historicity of John's Gospel - very many critics don't): 'To whom shall we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.' The character and quality of their early faith is certainly problematic

"And the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed was certainly not that he had died for your sins, because, obviously, he hadn't. So what was it?"

Again, the words missing are 'Not Yet'. Otherwise we are back with Renan's nonsense!

"So in Jesus' early proclamation there was obviously some powerful considerations of meaning that were entirely independent of the resurrection, and given what his first disciples probably thought about him (and maybe what he thought of himself) of the incarnation as well."

No, that can't be correct. His disciples followed him presumably because they thought he was the Messiah - but their traditional Jewish understanding of Messiahship had to be changed, and this is what Jesus was doing when he introduced to their minds the shovking idea of the Suffering Servant conjoined with the kingly Messiah - something totally unknown in Judaism heretofore. The idea appalled Peter (and presumably the offended disciples in John 6 who turned away from him) but is central to the Last Supper. As for the Resurrection of the dead, this was central to the belief of all Jews except the Sadducees, so what Jesus proclaimed could not have been "entirely independent of the resurrection".
As for Noah, I'm fairly sure Jesus beleived in the historicity of this patriarch.
Brian
Kelvin Wright said…
But your argument makes no sense.
The disciples weren't inspired by some "not yet"; by some theology that would be worked out some years after all of them had died, but by what they saw and experienced in their NOW.

And the Gospel accounts infer that they didn't think he was Messiah when they first started to follow. They wondered, certainly.

We are told that Jesus came from his temptation and proclaimed the Gospel. He was proclaiming it 3 years before his crucifixion so it simply CAN'T have been about his dying for us or his rising again.

His disciples followed not because he had died and risen but because he proclaimed Good News (Gospel) which was so compelling they left their nets and followed. The whole business of sacrifice for our sins was not nutted out until decades, some might argue centuries later.

Peter said that Jesus had the words of eternal life. So what were those words? I don't know,well, not exactly, but I know what they were not: they were not "Jesus has died for your sins"

And I don't think the concept of resurrection common in first century proto-Judaism had much in common with the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus.

As for Noah.... well I doubt that Jesus knew that North America was there, or would have been able to grasp Einstein's general theory of relativity. I'm sure he did, like almost all first century Jews, believe in the historicity of Noah. So what?
Howard Pilgrim said…
Thanks for recommending this film, Kelvin. I read it at 5.15pm and by 6 my wife and I were sitting in our local cinema waiting for it to begin. Stunning!
I have not yet read the book, but tried to start it once at someone's place, a few years ago. I will try again. I agree wholeheartedly with you that our instinct to trust in "a better story" lies at the heart of faith in God.
Warm regards,
Howard Pilgrim

Popular posts from this blog

Camino, by David Whyte

This poem captures it perfectly Camino. The way forward, the way between things, the way already walked before you, the path disappearing and re-appearing even as the ground gave way beneath you, the grief apparent only in the moment of forgetting, then the river, the mountain, the lifting song of the Sky Lark inviting you over the rain filled pass when your legs had given up, and after, it would be dusk and the half-lit villages in evening light; other people's homes glimpsed through lighted windows and inside, other people's lives; your own home you had left crowding your memory as you looked to see a child playing or a mother moving from one side of a room to another, your eyes wet with the keen cold wind of Navarre. But your loss brought you here to walk under one name and one name only, and to find the guise under which all loss can live; remember you were given that name every day along the way, remember you were greeted as such, and you neede

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and the

Kindle

 Living as I do in a place where most books have to come a long way in an aeroplane, reading is an expensive addiction, and of course there is always the problem of shelf space. I have about 50 metres of shelving in my new study, but it is already full and there is not a lot of wall space left; and although it is great insulation, what is eventually going to happen to all that paper? I doubt my kids will want to fill their homes with old theological works, so most of my library is eventually going to end up as egg cartons. Ebooks are one solution to book cost and storage issues so I have been  using them for a while now, but their big problem has been finding suitable hardware to read them on.  I first read them on the tiny screens of Ipaqs and they were quite satisfactory but the wretchedness of Microsoft Reader and its somewhat arbitrary copyright protection system killed the experience entirely. On Palm devices they were OK except the plethora of competing and incompatible formats

Ko Tangata Tiriti Ahau

    The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are Ngāti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Ōtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse  - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tūpuna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire.  Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon

Return to Middle Earth

 We had a flood, a couple of weeks back, and had to move all the stuff out of the spare bedroom, including  the contents of two floor to ceiling book cases. Shoving the long unopened copies of Sartor Resartus and An Introduction to Byron into cartons, I came upon my  copy of The Lord of the Rings . Written in the flyleaf are the dates of its many readings, the last one being when I read it aloud to Catherine, when she was about 10 or 11, well over 20 years ago. The journey across Middle Earth took Catherine and me the best part of a year, except for the evening when we followed Frodo and Sam across the last stretches of Mordor and up Mount Doom, when we simply couldn't stop, and sat up reading until 11.00 pm, on a school night.  My old copy is a paperback, the same edition that every card carrying baby boomer has somewhere on their shelves. The glue has dried and hardened. The cover and many of the pages have come loose. I was overcome with the urge to read it again, but this old