3D technology has often been maligned as a gimmick, a cheap parlor trick to distract audiences from a tired plot, but ever since serial innovator James Cameron unleashed the modern 3D age in 2009, many great directors with distinct visual styles have realized the unique opportunities that the new technology can offer. Martin Scorsese dazzled critics with his engrossing Hugo (no small feat for a film so far up its own ass) and Ridley Scott returned to science fiction with the entertaining but ultimately brain-dead Prometheus, both using 3D technology. Ang Lee, whos credits include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain, uses his new tools in Life of Pito wrap a beautiful three-dimensional canvas around an engaging love story between a shipwrecked Indian boy and a Bengal tiger.
Photo by Life of Pi Move via Flickr
Based on the bestselling novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi is a deeply spiritual film that attempts to answer the great questions surrounding faith in God. The film is divided into two parts: the first giving us background information on the adolescence of our religiously curious protagonist, Pi Patel and the second dealing with Pi’s exhausting survival while marooned on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger known as Richard Parker. Young Pi spends his youth learning about and eventually joining three disparate religions: Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Here, the film takes its time in exploring the positives each religion offers: the beauty of the Gods in Hinduism, God’s love and sacrifice in Christianity, and a sense of community and brotherhood from Islam. Relentlessly mocked by his peers and even by his pessimistic zookeeper father, Pi is ultimately resolute in his commitment to bettering himself through religion.
Life of Pi is a film that requires the 3D experience in the same way that most films now demand to be seen in color. When Pi’s father is forced to sell the zoos and all of its animal residents, the family and the animals travel by cargo ship, where they are beset by a tempest of Biblical proportions. The subsequent shipwreck and Pi’s eventual isolation on a lifeboat with a deadly Bengal tiger are rendered gorgeously in 3D with the help of photo-realistic special effects. I can scarcely imagine watching the film without experiencing the depth of field that Lee creates using his specialized 3D cameras. Ang Lee earned every ounce of that gold Oscar statue for Best Director, balancing the film’s impressive visuals while never losing the heartfelt message of the film.
Much ruckus has been made at the situation Ang Lee found himself in this past Oscar telecast when he won the Best Directing Oscar, but was unable to secure the award for Best Picture. Lee been in this situation before, with 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, and “Best Picture” winner Argo failed to even secure a nomination for its director, Ben Affleck (Gigli, Daredevil). At the time, Lee’s win looked like an upset over safer choices like Spielberg, but after viewing the film I can say that this looks like a consolation prize for Life of Pi’s Best Picture dreams. The film is too amorphous and ambiguous to stop a crowd-pleasing juggernaut like Argo, as it requires a certain level of investment on the part of the audience. However, this is one of those films, as are most recent Best Picture nominees, that will make a larger cultural impact in the years to come than the films that took home the gold.