This movie is everything Castaway wanted to be and failed at miserably. I will tell you this if you’ve got a Blue Ray player, a large screen TV with 1080ip, and a killer sound system this movie will most definitely blow your mind. I’ve only got one out of those three and I still didn’t get to watch it on Blue Ray, but I still thought this movie rocked.
Now it does take around 40 minutes for the movie to get to the ship crash and ocean scenes which by Hollywood standards is way too long. It does feel a bit long but this movie is building the character of Pi and without these scenes you don’t get to know him, so when the ship sinks and he’s on the life boat it matters and you feel for him, because of all the set up that has gone into his character. Ang Lee has made some movie misses in his career but more or less he’s a capable director, a lot better than Ridley Scott and Tim Burton have been over the years. And he seems to really care about the movies he makes. His direction always shows it as his communication from written word to screen is impressive because there's not a lot of confusion in that translation. But I'm not saying all of his films are perfect. I'm just saying his ability to communicate through direction is much better than a lot of other directors out there. No matter what projects he gets, he seems to brings a good keen eye to the visuals.
He really takes his time with this movie, as I said before, until he just goes full tilt with the visual feasts and eye popping wonder when Pi and the tiger are on the life boat in the middle of the ocean. One of my favorite scenes of this movie is near the beginning and didn’t involve any mind blowing effects or computer generated imagery it was simply Pi telling the story about his name that only involved him, his class, and a chalk board. But the depth of his character this scene showed mixed with the simplest of visuals, told wonders, and is one of my favorite scenes I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. How Lee build story through showing and not telling was wonderful and is a lost art in Hollywood. The scene reminded me a lot of the opening scene in Rushmore and just conveyed enormous amount s of information about Pi’s character without getting carried away with all the things Hollywood movies tend to get carried away with now-a-days. Namely overindulgence for the sake of everything else, this scene was so economic in everything it did but yet the volumes it conveyed through visuals was mind blowing. It was a great piece of storytelling, as this movie was a good movie to see and worth the time to watch. But having said all of that I still think this movie is a little over rated, because I can’t really see myself watching it again as one times seems enough. I can’t help but being aware of that as I think about this movie and wonder how well it will age with time. Because normally the use of that much CGI is harmful for a movie the further time goes on. It just has a dated look to it. So I find myself wondering how dated this movie is going to be for its massive amount of CGI or will the story line that focuses on character protect the CGI? Only time will tell.
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