I’m conducting an experiment: Life of Pi concerns a basic metaphor about faith, how is that metaphor rendered in print and on screen? I’ve re-read the book. I’ve deliberately (at this stage) not watched Ang Lee’s film; rather, I’ve found a reviewer of the film (Jonathan Kim of the Huffington Post) who has not read the book, and then I’ve compared notes.
Jonathan Kim has derided what he saw, at least from the perspective of the metaphor:
‘Life of Pi is more about the nuts and bolts of a teenager surviving at sea and bonding with a tiger than a spiritual quest that asks hard questions about the wisdom, will, and existence of God and why he seems to enjoy inflicting so much suffering and death on unoffending humans. In the end, Life of Pi not only doesn’t answer any of religion’s big questions, it doesn’t even ask them.’
A damning opinion; but I reckon that Kim (and therefore, perhaps, Lee) has missed the point.
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