Life of Pi: Sliced a bit too thinly

Life of Pi (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity and scary images; young viewers may find it much too frightening
By Derrick Bang

Lyrical novels recounted by a sole narrator are notoriously difficult to translate into movies; the work-arounds designed to impart essential information can be clumsy, and we always lose the rhythm and sweep of the author’s prose.

Although he has survived a shipwreck, Pi (Suraj Sharma) finds that he is far from safe,
because his lifeboat has been commandeered by a ferocious tiger ... whose appetite
forces the young man to construct a "raft" from stray bits of survival equipment.

Factor in a substantial religious element, as the protagonist grapples with his concept of God, and the task becomes well-nigh impossible.

Director Ang Lee and scripter David Magee therefore deserve considerable credit for the care they’ve taken with Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. While the film is far from perfect, Lee shrewdly employs all manner of cinematic ingenuity to convey this story’s blend of surreal whimsy and harsh deprivation, along with an exotic, at times supernatural atmosphere that strongly evokes portions of Slumdog Millionaire.

Claudio Miranda’s cinematography deserves considerable credit as well, in terms of adding to this saga’s aura of mystery and magic realism. You’ll be moved to awe more than once, starting with the first things we see: simple establishing shots of animals at play in a small zoo in Pondicherry, India. This montage suggests a cheerful innocence that speaks volumes, and belies events to come.

Or my favorite shot: a sharply focused glimpse of bathers relaxing in lounge chairs at the edge of the Piscine Molitor swimming pool in Paris, France. Only when a swimmer cuts across our field of vision, do we realize that we’ve been observing all these people through water: proof of the pool’s crystal clarity.

Borrowing a leaf from Martel, whose book unfolds as if it had been told to him by its subject, Magee begins this narrative by introducing us to an adult Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan), whose comfortable life in Toronto, Canada, is pleasantly interrupted by an expat American writer who — at the suggestion of a mutual acquaintance — has traveled all the way from India to meet him.

Patel, our writer is told, is a man with a story. Patel readily acknowledges this claim, adding that his saga will demonstrate proof of God’s existence. This is a tantalizing assertion, and a simple statement that could be ruined if improperly scripted or shaded. But Khan’s utter sincerity is evident in the actor’s every expression and gesture; we — and the visiting writer – can’t help being intrigued.

Their relationship thus established, Patel is free to narrate his story, which (for the most part) removes the awkwardness of the voice-over device used from this point forward. The subsequent tale therefore unfolds as a lengthy flashback.

Taking Woodstock: Bummer trip

Taking Woodstock (2009) • View trailer for Taking Woodstock
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug use and considerable casual (and chaste) nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.4.09
Buy DVD: Taking Woodstock• Buy Blu-Ray: Taking Woodstock [Blu-ray]

Demetri Martin's flat and lifeless central performance is the core problem with director Ang Lee's curiously uninvolving adaptation of Taking Woodstock, a saga that we can't help expecting to display more of the exhilarating atmosphere that was central to the famed counter-culture music festival.

But no. Just as Martin's Elliot Teichberg never quite makes it to the festival per se — the stage and its music always just off-camera, over the next hill — Lee never taps into the vibrant energy necessary to tell this story properly. Like Teichberg, who wanders about in a perpetual haze, as if he's already heavily influenced by the pills and other controlled substances he keeps refusing, Lee's film just doesn't catch fire.

Having spent all his time behind the scenes, helping or watching as scores of
individuals orchestrate the chaos that finally results in the three-day Woodstock
festival, Elliot (Demetri Martin, center foreground) finally leaves his family's
dilapidated Catskills motel and heads down the road, hoping to get his own
personal taste of counter-culture joy.

Julie Taymor's crazed, opulent Across the Universe, for all its grotesque excess, did a far better job of capturing the unbridled, 1960s-style joie de vivre that we keep wishing from Lee's film.

In fairness, these expectations are fueled mostly by this film's publicity campaign, which leads patrons to expect a full-immersion bath in the heady waters of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll ... but that's not really the story Lee sets out to tell.

James Schamus' script, based on the memoir by Elliot Tiber — yes, it's the same person, albeit with a slightly different name — focuses more on the unlikely events that allowed Elliot to turn his small community upside-down, and the impact the resulting chaos had on him personally. At least, that's where the screenplay wants to go, but Martin's performance is so colorless that we never get a sense of growth.

Although firmly planted in Greenwich Village in 1969, working as an interior designer and attempting to embrace his own sexuality via the gay rights movement — but the film leaves this aspect of his life awfully vague — Elliot is forced to return to the Catskills that summer, where his hapless parents are badly mis-managing the family business: a dumpy motel laughingly dubbed the El Monaco. The local bank is threatening to foreclose, but Elliot successfully wins a brief stay of execution.

One cannot imagine a worse choice of parental career, because Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) haven't the faintest trace of people skills. Sonia, in particular, is a blustering, overbearing, ill-kempt cross between a dock worker and a water buffalo: a rude, waspish misanthrope in whom the milk of human kindness must have curdled decades earlier.

Staunton, it must be acknowledged, tears into this role for all she's worth. God forbid you should request an extra towel for your room.