For all its references to faith, belief and God, Life of Pi never really offers anything of substance along these lines. Its theology is blurry as well. Even when Pi has a vision of some sort during a lightning storm, we don’t know exactly what that vision is, what it means or how it might relate to Pi’s jambalaya beliefs. The movie doesn’t care. It just wants us to feel that we’ve seen a story about “faith” in some vague way. (In this sense it lacks the very same thing Prometheus did: conviction.)
It’s not as if I’m asking the filmmakers to fulfill a promise they never made. Near the beginning, when the Canadian writer first approaches the adult Pi, he says that he had been told Pi had a story that would “make me believe in God.” What we get does nothing of the sort – whether you’re Hindu, Christian, Muslim or anything else. Life of Pi simply wants to make us believe in belief, a goal that’s as easy on the intellect as the movie’s skies are on the eyes…
Read the rest of the review at Larsen On Film.
