Capturing Imagination in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001)
This week’s blog returns to an analysis of adaptation by examining a novel-to-film adaptation. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is one of my favourite novels, if not my favourite! Although I have too many to be that definitive really! So for this blog I decided to return to the film and its original source with my adaptation hat on for another look.
A still from the film: Pi alone in the Pacific Ocean
The terrifying sensation of being alone, orphaned, abandoned and floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is what the overwhelmingly colourful Life of Pi left me with when I closed the book on the last page. Not to mention the nauseating sickness that had washed over me with every mention of Pi’s ferocious feline companion! The book starts with an introduction stating that the author went to India seeking inspiration and there met an elderly man who said that he had a story that would make him ‘believe in God’. With this caveat, the novel then introduces Pi, full name Piscine Molitor Patel, and begins the story, which is an intriguing blend of fact and fiction. Pi’s journey does not keep you guessing whether the events are real life, magic or imaginary from scene to scene as in some novels that juggle the careful balance of magical realism, for instance, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Martel unfolds his tale so expertly that the reader just allows him, or herself, to be carried alongside Pi and Richard Parker on the lifeboat. The most intriguing aspect of the novel is whether Pi’s surreal story is real, meaning that magic does exist in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean, or if Pi’s account of his adventure was an unconscious psychological response to the trauma of losing his family. Whatever your opinion, how well the magic surrealism or Pi’s imaginative psychological response to his trauma was adapted for the camera was foremost in my mind when I approached the film.
The director Ang Lee said in an interview with John Hiscock at the Telegraph in December 2012 that it had taken him two months to decide to take on the mammoth challenge
He also stated that he wanted the film to be as unique as the book, which meant “creating the film in another dimension”. 3D was a burgeoning form at the time so Ang selected 3D as the “cinematic language” through which to express his art. The difficulty would be how to film the ocean scenes especially with a live tiger to consider. The tiger issue was of course resolved with the use of outstanding quality animation and the ocean was the world’s largest self-generating wave tank in Taiwan. Practicalities aside, Lee’s approach to film making is that the work has to provoke a ‘visceral response’ in him and that he has to be moved by them. With relation to the adaptation of the novel, Ang said that he focused on the storytelling aspect of the novel, when interviewed by Alex Billington in 2012 for firstshowing.net (http://www.firstshowing.net/2012/interview-ang-lee-on-the-journey-of-bringing-life-of-pi-to-the-screen/). The novel is itself a story told by the adult Pi to the author who is seeking an inspirational story. It is therefore an illusion. And it is a testament to both the novel and the film that you forget that this is someone’s tale. There are a few times at the beginning of the film where Ang deliberately reminds the audience that they are listening to the adult Pi’s story by cutting back to Pi and the author played by Rafe Spall as they are discussing the story and eating their lunch. This frames the story reminding the audience that they are watching an illusion. The thought provoking conclusion where young Pi recounts the last few months of his life to the Japanese insurance company representatives responsible for the boat that was chewed up by the storm are obviously aware of the illusion that Pi has created. But rather than leaving the audience with the confirmation that Pi created a false reality to protect himself as he traversed the vast Pacific Ocean alone, Lee leaves this open allowing the audience to make up their own minds. Was this a story to make YOU believe in God?
For me, yes. I am intensely aware of the two potential stories that collide in Life of Pi the novel and I swing from believing in the magical realism of a young boy existing with a live tiger to accepting his story as an unconscious response to his trauma. This lack of certainty regarding the veracity of Pi’s tale is one of the most exciting aspects of the novel and because this sense of illusion was also vital to Ang Lee when he approached adapting Life of Pi the film is as much of a success and a thrill as the original source.
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