Saw "
Life of Pi". Amazing movie. An absolute visual treat. I'm sure this movie and the book it's based on has been analyzed countless times but couldn't help from summarizing it all for myself.
(SPOILERS AHEAD! READ WITH CAUTION)
Needless to say that this movie is full of allegories, analogies and deeper meanings about life, religion, meaning of God and spirituality. The analogies start from Pi's name (Piscine) itself which really stands for a "swimming pool" in Paris, a pool is a place which hold water, water = spirit, God, life..."God, make me your vassal". The tiger's real name is "Thirsty" and where else beside lost in a life boat in the middle of the ocean can you be surrounded by water and still die of thirst. God is all around us, yet we still die without truly knowing him or accepting him or understanding him. Tiger = Thirst for God.
The characters on the boat in Life of Pi are all actual components of the self. The tiger is Pi’s (ours) primal self, the orangutan represents motherly love , the brutal hyena our evil side and the timid zebra is a young sailor represents the innocence of youth and the first to die. All are essential for becoming who we are. However, the most important component of self is the raft… which represents Pi's faith. It is something that he has to construct by himself, in order to be effective.
The tiger is also his own fear, ego, anxiety, depression, desolation, and despair. (When you look into his eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you - nothing else) It is faith that helps Pi cross the cruel and endless sea. He feeds the tiger (ego/fear) so it doesn't kill him and also because he wants the tiger to stay alive as his fear/ego is helping him survive and at the same time he tries to control it, slowly and gradually he makes progress.There is a storm scene later in the movie, when Pi starts to unfasten the tarp on the boat, demanding the tiger to come out and see the hand of God. Eventually when he sees the tiger terrified of the storm and struggling to hide from the storm, he began fastening the tarp again. He realizes that the tiger (fear/ego) is itself afraid of facing God.
The floating island represents Hindu God "Vishnu", ( Vishnu sleeps, floating on the shoreless cosmic ocean and we are the stuff of his dreaming) its a metaphor of life trapped in a cycle of birth and death, never really dealing with its true meaning. (But all that the island gave him by day, it took away again by night) On the surface it's comforting and life sustaining, but in the end, it kills you by sapping your spiritual soul because of ignorance, apathy and cowardice. Pi subsequently leaves the island, knowing the path ahead is full of danger but he wants to be enlightened and archive liberation "Nirvana" and not be trapped in a cycle of nothingness.
Ultimately when he reaches the Mexican shore, he is saved, he defeats his fears and therefore you see the tiger leaving without even saying goodbye. It hurts Pi because the tiger helped him survive, it was his struggle with his own self doubt and fears that kept him alive in this real and spiritual journey. Human like ceremonies, they need closure. The tiger leaving without saying goodbye leaves a hole in Pi's life as evidences by his tears while narrating that part of the story. Ultimately Pi's fear/ego are as much a part of him as any of his positive attributes.
The two versions of realities of what actually happened when Pi was lost at sea in a boat for 227 days (22/7 = Pi) given to the author (audience) to decide in the end makes for a very interesting question."
And so it goes with God.” Same question can be asked about the existence or belief in God. Obviously the horror filled story of human brutality and suffering is the actual truth but its humans nature not to believe that the world is nothing but murder, cannibalism and bloodstained tooth and nail. We prefer to make sense of things in a different perspectives. Religion, in this view, provides us with the ability to form our own narratives, with concepts that embrace and clarify the beauty and purpose of our own stories. Religions are folly, full of holes and weaknesses, but they help people make sense of life, love and morality. Therefore, which version of the story we want to believe really depends on what we want to make of our lives.
The story is about wrestling with a physical tiger but also a metaphoric one... with questions of faith. Its about how you can find spirituality and the meaning of life in the throes of all that is horrible and terrible in the world today. It is done by surviving and making sense of all that goes wrong in the world, that uncovers the true spirit of man.
In the final analysis, just as Pi is a mathematical constant, an irrational number that can never be fully comprehended, The Life of Pi is essentially unfathomable… as is the battle between religion, science and spirituality.
This quote from the book really nails the true message of the movie in my opinion.
“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
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