Life of Pi is a magical
adventure story centering on Pi Patel, the precocious son of a zoo keeper.
Dwellers in Pondicherry, India, the family decide to move to Canada, hitching a
ride on a huge freighter. After a shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the
Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound
Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all fighting for survival.
The film is based on
the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, and it is difficult to think of a book
which will be harder to transfer to the big screen. Life of Pi is so
multi-faceted, so multi-layered, that it is just the question of how much is
lost in translation rather than how to transfer everything accurately. And the
real achievement of the filmmakers is that they managed not only to keep the
atmosphere, the storyline and the main idea intact, but they actually enhanced
the experience considerably.
