I had a chance to see the movie Life of Pi. It was a excellent movie. However I have some questions about the main point of this movie. I know Pi was a lone survivor of his entire family and was shipwrecked with a tiger. I know trying to survive each day was a difficult journey for him. There were moments in the movie that his faith in God really help through his moments of despair. Did I miss any other underlying meaning in this movie ? It was more a faith journey when I saw this movie.
Casey2013-04-17T06:24:39Z
Favorite Answer
The wonderful thing about Life of Pi is that it can be interpreted to mean many things, depending on the viewer. My personal interpretation is that the main purpose of the story is to confront the question of whether or not there is a God in a unique way. At the end of the story, we are presented with two possible explanations for Pi's journey: a fantastic, almost unbelievable tale with the animals, as well as a grim, unspectacular tale with humans. I believe the animal story represents faith/religion, while the people story represents science/fact. In life, everyone eventually has to decide what they choose to believe in, or not believe in. Yann Martel is trying to make the point that while religion and faith in a God is quite frankly hard to understand and inconceivable to us sometimes, as it is the Japanese men who listen to Pi's story in the hospital, the alternative, a world without God and based on solely science/fact that we can understand may not be as great as we thought it would. Personally, I believe what the audience saw, the story with the tiger, is what really happened. Furthermore, as someone who thinks that story represent faith, I think that Richard Parker represents God. And the reason he never said goodbye on the shore is because although the tiger left Pi, God never did.
If you want the real deal on the LIfe of Pi... read about Lord Ganesha and how he lost his head. It's a hindu tale about self-awareness of who we are (like him realizing his name is Pi... what is Pi? It's an infinite number, like the Hindus would call it as the atman, the real self), and that he's not his ego, or in the movie's case, he's not really Richard Parker. But everyone on the spiritual journey has to go through that, it's not so much about a shipwreck as it is about the hardship, the suffering of banishing the ego and coming to terms with the real self. the real self was the island.. if you look at that scene at night time, the island is a human figure lying on its back. Anyways the very first scene of the movie when there's that close up of the lizard looking straight into the camera in the rain, off to the left is a small statue/caricature of the Hindu God Ganesha and in each of his four hands are symbols that are mysteriously introduced into the movie. They are tools, so to speak, that are given to anyone on their spiritual journey.. the whole movie is riddled with Hindu mythology... for example Ganesh's mother, Parvati (or sometimes referred to as Lakshmi) rides on the back of a 'tiger, while Ganesh rides on the back of a 'rat'. I could go on and on. Such a brilliant movie. Love it!!