What would you expect from a movie that promises to make you “believe in God?” Maybe a little God?
That’s what a Canadian writer (Rafe Spall) has been told about the life story of Pi Patel – that it will make him believe in God. And so, at the beginning of Life of Pi, he seeks out the adult Patel (Irrfan Khan) and asks him to share this revelatory tale. It’s a whopper, for sure – about a boy who grew up in a zoo in India, collected world religions for a hobby and found himself stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger as a young man. But there’s nothing of substance about faith of any kind. Vague and blurry – like the woozy, computer-generated imagery that dominates its visual scheme – Life of Pi is one of those spiritually cozy movies that wants you to believe in little more than … belief.
The movie’s softness is challenged early on by one of its own characters. As the young Pi (Ayush Tandon) dabbles in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, his irreligious father (Adil Hussain) looks on with disapproval, telling him, “Believing in everything at the same time is the same as not believing in anything at all.” The movie treats this sentiment as a symptom of unenlightened repression, but it’s a notion someone like G.K. Chesterton would likely have appreciated.
Still, Life of Pi deserves a chance to make its case for syncretism. And the central section seems set up to do just that. Now a teen (Suraj Sharma), Pi travels aboard a ship with his family and the zoo's animals, which they hope to sell in order to start a new life in Canada. When a storm capsizes the vessel, Pi finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with no other human survivors. Alone and adrift, Pi seems primed for soul-searching of the first order.
But that’s not what we get. Instead, director Ang Lee piles on the visual wonder. We get shots of the placid sea, in which the glassy water and rosy sky merge, and a psychedelic, underwater tour that seems modeled after nothing less than the creation sequence in The Tree of Life. It’s all a bit soft and gooey for my taste, like half-baked figgy pudding. We’re meant to be wowed by the beauty of (faux) nature and, in response, I guess, you know, believe.
There is a storm sequence in which Pi’s faith struggle becomes a bit more literal. As the winds rage and the rain pelts, Pi howls back at the sky, claiming he sees God. But we don’t. More importantly, we never learn what Pi means. The movie never tells us what it is that he believes. Such a story lacks even the conviction of syncretism, which takes a little of this and a little of that and at least adds up to something. Life of Pi gives us nothing while pretending to hold the universe in the palm of its hand.
Francis Schaeffer spoke of this sort of vagueness in a 1982 address to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America. Though discussing denominational - rather than faith - differences, he made this larger observation: “The spirit of our age is syncretism in all the areas of life, in all the areas of thought. The spirit of our age is syncretism, and thus accommodation is the rule. The spirit of our age is the age of syncretism in contrast in truth versus error; and this being so, accommodation is the common mentality.”
This lack of conviction is a recurring problem with faith films (not the Fireproof, but the Hollywood variety). Earlier this year, Prometheus threw out all sorts of faithy elements – even that old standby, a cross necklace - but ultimately used God as a MacGuffin. Such pictures can’t be pinned down because they don’t want to be. These movies don’t really care about faith; they just want us to feel that we've seen a story about "faith" in some vague way.
On those uninspired terms, Life of Pi succeeds.
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Comments (17)
[SPOILERS AHEAD] Essentially, the whole story of LIFE OF PI can be seen as a confirmation of syncretism, how mish-mashing disparate beliefs together helps Pi understand and cope with the realities of the world. In the beginning of the film, we see Pi finding meaning in aspects of different belief systems. His first religion, Hinduism, is itself a collection of "superheroes", so we understand the basis for why Pi is interested in collecting a superteam of religious ideas. This idea is further reflected in the zoo, being a collection of organisms placed in a wholly artificial environment for the benefit of entertainment and knowledge gathering. Pi's story is itself a potpurri of action, adventure, comedy romance involving the interaction of a hodgepodge of animals. The reveal at the end of the film suggests (this is just one interpretation) that Pi is using his story as a coping mechanism to make sense of the tragedy of his experience. He sees syncretism of story as an answer to life's mystery and inherent darkness. This is the key that gives us insight into Pi's religious belief system ("And so it goes with God"). What is so empty about that?
But again, this is just one interpretation of a thematically rich film. The meditation on the relationship between humans and animals is just as fulfilling, in my opinion.
As for the other films you mention - especially The Tree of Life and 2001 - those are purposefully open-ended to allow the audience to fill in the gaps. Life of Pi pretends to be full, but is empty.
But I don't think we need to know exactly what Pi believes in. I think the movie addresses that critique with the quote that you mention, “Believing in everything at the same time is the same as not believing in anything at all.” The film then goes on to argue, through its story, that Pi ultimately believes in the power of storytelling. And that's not nothing--it got him through a horrific ordeal! I'm sure Pi would like to say to his dad, "Look where my scattered beliefs got me!"
Second, the film is valuable as a parable showing why people believe. We see the plea in every book or article from the "New Atheist" camp, who cannot see why people cling on to their primitive notions of God. The reason is that for many it is not just a crutch or opium, it is the very lens they see the world through and abandoning their belief is akin to stranding them out in the ocean with no guide or hope.
Lastly, a more troubling issue is the way the film deals with truth. In order to value syncretism, you must devalue truth. And the film seems to be saying, whatever works, and if you need to sacrifice your pursuit of what is true to rest and be comfortable with a comforting lie, then go for it. This film is a long advertisement for the Blue Pill in the Matrix. Hopefully they will address Pi's search for truth in the sequel, "The Continued Life of Pi: There's Just a Gorilla Flying This Plane!"
Would you re-evaluate your opinion of Pi if Pi was revealed to have a belief along the following lines:
"The story you tell yourself about this world is more 'digestable' with God in it than without a God in it."
Pi's intentional retelling of his journey on the ocean is a point about our need for religion, myths, stories and role models than about the truth in those things themselves. That is, regardless of whether a story or theory is true or not, can that story be important because it simply makes us feel better about our precarious, often powerless place in the universe?
I don't think that's entirely true, because Pi's last words as the narrators, "And so it is with God," is about as articulate as an eloquent book will get without being explicit. Because where's the fun in seeking the spirit if it is explicitly laid out for us :)
But if you still don't believe me, I'd like to quote the author in an interview. Granted, movie-watchers wouldn't have the benefit of this but the movie moved me enough to seek some further insight. Below is the excerpt from the interview, which can be found here: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=124838
Q. What a thought-provoking story! My question is which story was in your mind the actual one? Was it his faith in God which allowed him to experience the "animal" version and to protect him from the gruesome reality? Was that the wonder of the story that you intended? I have difficulty even asking because I firmly believe that a story is determined somewhere in the intersection of reader and text. I am curious though, what your intended interpretation was. — Sarah
A. Dear Sarah, I leave it to the reader to choose which is the better story. It can go both ways. Pi survived with Richard Parker and then, confronted with the skepticism of the Japanese, and wanting his suffering to be validated, to be accepted, he creates another story, the story without animals. That's one reading. Or Pi and his mother and the French cook and a Taiwanese sailor survive, it turns into a butchery and Pi invents the story with animals presumably to pass the time and to make acceptable the unacceptable, that is, the murder of his mother by the Frenchman and Pi's killing of the Frenchman. Both stories are offered, one is on the outer edges of the barely believable, the other is nearly unbearable in its violence, neither explains the sinking of the ship, in both Pi suffers and loses his family, in both he is the only human survivor to reach the coast of Mexico. The investigators must choose and the reader must choose. When the investigators choose the story with animals, Pi answers "And so it goes with God." In other words, Pi makes a parallel between the two stories and religion. His argument (and mine) is that a vision of life that has a transcendental element is better than one that is purely secular and materialist. A story with God ("God" defined in the broadest sense) is the better story, I argue, just as I think the story with animals is the better story. But you choose.
I see what you are doing - but as you may have learnt, you are talking to an audience that seeks material that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, not an audience that is open to opening up their belief systems.
When we cling to a certain book or a certain spiritual figure in order to define ourselves, we will fail to see the truth that can exist separately from those books and figures. In that respect, the need to believe that your religion is "superior" to another will keep you in the dark if there is a grain of salt in multiple stories, particularly if reality is too complicated to be captured by any one story.
I was left wondering which story at the end was the true one - the tiger version or the other. If it was the other, then the whole thing, in a Campbellian way, suggests that faith is just a coping mechanism. If the tiger version was true then maybe the point is that this world of death is the shadow world. But regardless, it definitely served as an excellent discussion film about big issues, and I think any art that does that is valuable.
I loved the floating island of deadly weeds. What a powerful picture of temptation.
In that case, I would argue that the floating island story is the exact opposite. Pi overcomes the temptation to stay on the island where life is more acceptable than a life forever marooned on the ocean. However, he holds out hope to meet another human being and as long as he holds that hope, the island is a prison.
P.S. As 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite movie evar, I take some umbrage to the comparisons here; 2001, taken properly with the book and the background of the score, most notably Also Sprach Zarathustra, has no such confusion about or syncretism within its religious (or irreligious) message.
This is true if one believes that symbols ARE ultimate reality. Most syncretists would argue that the symbols are symbols, and their representation is 'through a glass darkly'. Therefore, when one sees symbol A, and another symbol B, those are simply different interpretations of that which the human condition will not allow us to see clearly. Truth with a capitol T is not devalued. But our epistemological certainty about our symbols is.
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