Life Of Pi: One Great Life Story

"Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing."

            

            If you are seeking God and you feel like He’s out of reach, maybe you’re looking at the wrong places and maybe you have to watch Life of Pi.

           

            What happens when an award-winning novel is brought to the big screen by an award-winning director? The answer- Life of Pi. No wonder it got 11 nominations in the Oscars.The film is adapted from the Booker Prize-winning novel of Yann Martel that carries the same title and is directed by no less than the great Ang Lee himself.

            

            Ang Lee, who has directed films from Sense and Sensibility to Brokeback Mountain, has proven that a novel that seems unfilmable can be filmable. The movie is visually stunning with all the graphics and CGI. Cinematography wise I’ll give it a perfect 10. The story can be considered inspirational and the heartfelt performance of Suraj Sharma stirs a whole lot of different emotions.

            

           Let me give you a short peek of what the film is about. A young Canadian writer goes to an Indian émigré in search of a good story that would make him believe that there’s a God. And so the story kicks off and Pi shares his adventure to the young writer.

            

            As a kid, Pi had an urge to find God. So in his younger years he was a Hindu, Christian and a Muslim. His father, who believes in reason or science, encourages him to let go of religion and basically everything he believes in but he still believed anyway. He believed that there is a God maybe in the form of Vishnu or Christ or Allah.

         

        In his teenage years, he and his family had to sell their zoo animals and migrate to Canada. Once aboard the Japanese ship, Pi knew that he had to let go of everything that he had in India including the girl he liked. Along the way they experienced a thunderstorm and needless to say experienced a shipwreck. All but Pi, Richard Parker (the tiger), an Orangutan, a Zebra and a Hyena was buried into the deep. The story revolves on these characters and their struggle to survive until only Pi and Richard Parker was left and the story goes deeper. Lost at sea, Pi finds ways on how he can manage to live without getting eaten by the ravenous tiger and if he can tame it at all.

            

           The young Pi did a wonderful job of his own. How hard is it to act as if there’s really a tiger in front of you? Real hard I’d say but Saruj Sharma pulled it off. Another thing I like about the film is that my eyes never get tired. With all the colors and visual effects, the film really works wonders in 3D. While the setting is at the middle of nowhere in the ocean, you would get to feed your eyes with an amazing set of creatures that they encountered all throughout the film. The film is also wonderfully scored and as I said earlier the cinematography is beyond astounding.

            

          Now to the what-I-don’t-like part. The story was poorly paced and I felt it dragged me throughout the film trying to get to the climax. I can’t help but be reminded of Tom Hanks in Castaway and Robin Crusoe since they somehow had the same experience.  The film has that tendency to put aside its real purpose and that is to show God. You’ll realize it for a minute and forget it the next. The film also goes from awe-something to nothing like for instance they would just be flooded by another storm again and something like that.

            

              In the end, I find Life of Pi most interesting not only for its wondrous spectacle but also for its life story that holds true for everyone. It shows how God proves himself and can change someone even at the most unexpected times. The story defies reality but is definitely something to embrace and it is up to us if we believe or not Pi’s story and his encounter in search of God.

Sherlock The Great

 

Have you watched the film Sherlock Holmes? Here’s a better question. Have you read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book and tried to imagine Sherlock Holmes without imagining Robert Downey Jr.? If not, then good heavens I’m not alone!

I have recently (if November is considered recent) borrowed my friend’s first volume of the complete novels and stories of Sherlock Holmes and I have to admit-it’s a classic for a reason. Not only because it’s been written ages ago that’s why it’s considered classic but because it has been written excellently.

If you plan to read the book, here are some key points to remember:

1) Sherlock Holmes is not who you think he is. Everyone knows that Mr. Holmes is the most unusual detective who uses the science of deduction in forming his conclusions but not everyone knows how peculiar he can get. He is a man who considers the brain of a man to be an empty attic, and one has to stock it with such furniture as he pleases. A fool, according to Sherlock Holmes, would take in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might prove useful to him get crowded out or jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. On the other hand, the skillful workman is very careful into what he takes into his brain-attic. It is a common mistake as well to think that this little room is elastic. That is why Mr. Holmes, in contrast to what others believe, has his limitations too to the point that he doesn’t know or even care to know the Solar System. He plays violin pretty well and knows a good lot about sensational literature. On the type of cases he handles, he goes for small than big ones because he believes that there lie greater mysteries in those cases. He is the laziest arse you could ever meet but the most energetic when he finds a case of his utmost interest.

2) There is a sidekick. If Batman has Robin, Sherlock Holmes has Dr. John Watson. The book uses the third person in the character of Dr. Watson who narrates the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He begins with how he met Sherlock Holmes, how he met his wife (thanks to Sherlock Holmes in The Sign Of Four) and how they shared many adventures together-solving cases and unraveling the truth. Although he finds Sherlock Holmes very trying and bizarre at times he was able to make a good acquaintance out of him. All throughout the book, Dr. Watson was there trying to break a case with his friend Holmes, jotting down these little escapades (which Sherlock Holmes criticizes) and always willing to lend a hand to his dear friend.

3) Bring a dictionary. I don’t know with you but I needed to look on the dictionary once in a while because of some highfaluting and curious words that Sir Doyle used. Although I know the words, I still had to look for their meanings. The author made use of words in such a creative manner where the reader can either be flabbergasted or demented. This is not meant to scare you but to encourage you. The more you read such classics, the more words add to your vocabulary. The more words you add to your vocabulary, the more you get better in the four macro-skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening).

4) It will blow your mind. Every single story is well-plotted. The stories, as promised by Sherlock Holmes, are not your usual ones. The book covers a great deal of literary genre-suspense, comedy and even romance (though Sherlock Holmes is not really a romanticist). For that reason, you wouldn’t find the book dull and lifeless. The more you dig deeper on the cases, the more you want hooked to them. As a reader, you would like to solve the case on your own trying to make out something out of the clues given out before Sherlock Holmes reveals the solution behind the problem. Yet what’s more interesting is that it doesn’t only point out the “greatness” of Holmes but his weaknesses as well and how he loses in some of the cases. This just shows that even The Great Sherlock Holmes has his Waterloo. I’d say the book is not merely for reading’s sake but it will also put your thinking and reasoning skills to the test. As you read, you would ask questions like, “How in the world did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made that story?” or “Why is Sherlock Holmes awesome?”. 

5) You will hunger for more. After reading the first volume, you would feel how the public demanded Doyle to ingeniously bring back to life Sherlock Holmes after killing him in “His Last Bow”. As soon as you finish Volume 1 you would be so eager to read Volume 2 as if the first volume was not enough. The book gives you a lot of nail-biting scenes where you just can’t drop the book and stop reading. 

 

The book speaks for itself. It’s a classic beyond a shadow of a doubt and it should be read by everyone. After all, The Great Sherlock Holmes who lives down yonder Baker Street could be of assistance to your hard-pressed spirits.