Which story do you believe?
Religious symbolism in the life of Pi
The story began with a young boy, Pi Patel, growing up in India with his family. The political struggle made his father decide to immigrate to Canada and sold the zoo once he owned. On a cargo ship, the family with all the animals started their new journey. However, a severe storm struck the ship and Pi lost his family in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He found himself on a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and the tiger named Richard Parker. Eventually, only the tiger and Pi lived through the suffering as they return to the human world.
Religious Pluralism
“faith is a house with many rooms”
In the life experience of Pi, religious pluralism is established through a variety of metaphors. From the movie, he stated himself as a multi believer who practices Hinduism, Islam and Christianity three religions at the same time. While in the debate with his father, Pi’s religious pluralism was questioned by blind acceptance of dogma. He started to defend himself in willingness to get baptized and revealed his determination against his father. A strong belief of worshipping multiple gods would not interfere but harmoniously coexist with each other laid a solid foundation in his mind.
For example, when he and Richard Parker were suffering in the sea, his hope of survival was received by his beliefe in God. The flying fish drops massively from the sky, it seems like a sign from God to help him continue the journey. As a vegetarian himself, he violates to kill and eat fish that his belief contradicts the real-life issue to survive. The paradoxical circumstance validated the existence of pluralism that Vishnu has transformed into fish offered him a reason for his action. Moreover, he saw himself as Jesus to master and train Richard parker to build up a relationship of trust. Taking care of the tiger became his purpose of survival after the exhaustion of endless suffering. Furthermore, the adventure has also symbolized the journey to Mecca that he overcame ordeals to attend the divine destination. He had once trapped in an imaginative island while he saw the Vishnu in the hallucination. He received a human tooth that might be the precedent human trace digested on the island would become his destiny. It was another sign from God to awake him to leave the island that full of acid pools. Religious Pluralism had a significant impact on holding his hope to continue the adventure and retrieve to the human world.
CGI technology
Computer-generated scenes with religious symbolism
It is a truism that CGI took a major part of the scenes in this film, Ang lee reinforced religious symbols through an unconventional approach. Corresponding to the two stories told by the end, it is assuredly the imaginative world created in the film is truthful to the audience. The immersive environment vividly produced through CGI made possible of the religious scenes that were not achievable in reality. In the praying scene of the mosque, the shooting was restricted to the inside. Therefore, the crew set up the blue screen to create a spiritual scene for the crowd to perform a praying service in front of the mosque. During the suffering over the sea, CGI acted like God generated storms and heavens witnessed the experience of Pi going through the adventure. In the ceremony of honoring Vishnu, an authentic scene was constructed to resemble a real spiritual performance. The authenticity has carried the religious symbol beyond the production of the film that raised the importance of the producers should believe in their work. Furthermore, the later appeared banyan tree and the body of Vishnu convinced Pi of arriving on an island of heaven. At the same time, the glowing acid pools that appeared at night reminded him to escape from this imagination. The CGI created a world that both trapped Pi in the imaginative world as well as us the audience.
In the aspect of production, Ang lee has a variety of studios across the world that gather multiple perspectives in the process. As a Chinese director, the religious theme and the main character appeared to be an Indian boy was never a popular film type in the Chinese market. Thoughtfully, the fame of the director and the newly integrated CGI technology had undertaken the risk became a high consumption at the time. It helped people to improve their knowledge of different cultures and religions through an unconventional approach that was fit well in popular culture. In the western world, the film was successful in the creation of the unfilmable scenes in the original novel written by Yann Martel. The consumption occupied drastically all around the world and produce a significant impact on the film industry. At the end of the film, it left with open-ended stories for the audience to choose which one should they believe. In this aspect, the decoding messages as the outcome of the production can’t control the meaning of the reception. Therefore, based on people’s experience of life, different interpretations of stories would appear. It encourages interactions of the audience and gave opportunities for the consumer to write their own endings.
Science and Religion
Which story do you prefer?
Pi: I’ve told you two stories about what happened out on the ocean. Neither explains what caused the sinking of the ship. And no one can prove which story is true and which is not. In both stories, the ship sinks, my family dies, and I suffer. So which story do you prefer?
The underlying topic of science and religion was well embedded in the two versions of the stories told by the end. The two Japanese officers sought to reveal the truth of the story but only want to believe in a reasonable story to persuade their boss. In reality, similar issues have appeared while the wide-spreading news from an authentic media had turned into fake news. They were usually biased and created representations to mislead people's understanding of certain issues. The distrust of media had been a concern to remind us to be consciously aware of the information we obtained from the broadcasting internet. However, it seems inevitable to some circumstances the line between the truth and beliefes had blurred the boundary. The story of Pi with animals on the boat had difficulties to persuade the two rationalists, Japanese officers. Despite all the interesting details they have heard from Pi of his story, they need a receivable reason to explain how he survives through such extreme life conditions. In this sense, the truth of the story was no longer important to expose but the beliefe in their mind had already given their answer of what they were willing to hear about. On the other hand, the reasonable story revealed that cannibalism among people told us the real story was sometimes hard to believe in. The French cook who appears in the previous scene on the ship presented as the hyena uncovered its true evil of killing the zebra and the orangutan. The zebra was the sailor with a broken leg and the orangutan was Pi’s mother explained the law of jungle, the weak serve for the prey of the strong. Richard parker became Pi himself reflected fear and exhaustion to live, he overcame ordeals to become a stronger self. The rational aspect of the story encouraged us to question ourselves about where we fit in the movie and the reality in a larger scope. The similar phenomenon appeared in the society we lived in, no matter how hard we struggled in life, we were told by the rule of selecting the superior and eliminate the inferior in our survival game. We once saw our shadow in the characters in the movie, but we are not willing to admit the sadness of the truth.
The journey of Hero
Ordinary life: Pi lived with his family in India
Call to adventure: His father decided to sell the zoo and immigrate to Canada. The journey on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific Ocean
- Refusal of the call: he refused to go to Canada at first since he has to leave behind his girlfriend.
Threshold: He saw himself as the only survivor on the boat and taking care of Richard Parker became his hope of life. He was on the adventure of returning to the ordinary world
Mentor: He has to fight the environment, the storm, and hunger. He learned to train and master the tiger and build up a trustful relationship.
Ordeal: Major part of the scene at the sea, the storm and thunders strike the boat. To kill and eat fish and trained the tiger not to eat him.
Ultimately he landed on the shore of Mexico and return to ordinary life.
Conclusion
Religious symbolism was not hard to capture from the movie, but it extended beyond the film to think about your own belief and meaning of life. While we struggled to survive in reality, we kept searching for inner peace to balance our life. Many times we were immersed in the imaginative world that full of our beliefs, the image and words we were willing to see and hear. That our childhood memory told us the world is around with good people and things. Our framework has been reshaped as we grow up, the real world exposed deeply to the bloody truth that sometimes we were hard to accept. The blurring line between truth and belief had lingered us to search the truth in different worlds.
Work Cited
- Stephens, Gregory. “Feeding Tiger, Finding God: Science, Religion, and “the Better Story” in Life of Pi.” Intertexts, vol. 14 no. 1, 2010, p. 41–59. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/itx.2010.0004.
- Wagner, Rachel. “Screening Belief: The Life of Pi, Computer Generated Imagery, and Religious Imagination.” Religions, vol. 7, no. 8, 2016, p. 96., doi:10.3390/rel7080096.
- Kuriakose, John. “Religious Pluralism in Yan Martel’s Life of Pi: A Case of Intertextual Correspondence with Swami Vivekananda’s Religious Philosophy.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2018, p. 138–145., doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.2p.138.