Review: Life of Pi

Nature is tranquil and peaceful and beautiful at those times when the water is still, when the animals are calm, and the breeze is light. Life of Pi begins with a feeling of the tranquility of the natural world.

And there's family and nostalgia and what feels like magic.

Pi grows up idolizing his father, the man who ought to be any rationalist’s favourite character in the film. His father tries to push Pi toward a career in science, to shake Pi's obsession with different spiritual traditions, but the boy never seems to lose his love for religious paradigms, even when they are mutually exclusive.

The message seems to be that Truth is personal. The actual facts of the matter are less important than the beliefs of individuals. Religions therefore do not need to be understood as literally true, but rather as models for seeing the world. In this way, one can be a Christian and a Muslim and a Hindu all at the same time. God is a state of mind.

Pi’s story shares similarities with many biblical parables: Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the Whale, the Book of Job, as he tries to reconcile his faith with the needless destructivity of nature. On his Columbus-like journey to Canada, he learns the answers to the theological queries of his youth. The journey, as it usually is in literature, symbolizes and parallels a personal journey to self-discovery.

The film, it seems, is part argument, part prayer, and part cheer.

The Terry Fox Cheer: In Canada, Terry Fox is considered a national hero. He was an ordinary guy that was diagnosed with cancer. His foundation raised millions of dollars for cancer research by getting people to sponsor his run across Canada despite terminal cancer and a prosthetic leg. He achieved a certain level of celebrity before the cancer killed him. There are two major lessons to learn from this story:

1. That hope and determination only get you so far (the cancer killed him in the end)
2. That we find purpose through our encounters with others, even in the face of death (he’s celebrated despite “losing” the battle with cancer)

A lot can be learned about a culture by looking at its heroes. The extent to which Fox is glorified in Canada is emblematic of the culture. Canadians don’t value those that are especially talented or brainy, but rather those who overcome the odds by hard work and determination. Hollywood is a fan of the underdog effect as well. The idea is that in bleak situations you must hope against hope, never give up, and if you do, things will get better. This value as promoted in popular media is what I call the Terry Fox Cheer.

Life of Pi has a subtler take on this message, however. Just as the cancer killed Terry Fox in spite of all his determination, the hostility of nature will crush you all the same, indifferent to your outlook or religion. The storm will sink your boat, the tiger will rip your head off, and the acid water will really eat your flesh. Pi learns that hope alone is not enough to get through life’s obstacles, that a degree of practicality and technical know-how is required. But even as hope without smarts will land you in a tiger’s stomach, smarts without hope leaves you with no desire to avoid getting eaten by the tiger in the first place.

In explaining his decision not to let Richard Parker drown, Pi says that tending to the tiger gave his own life purpose. He had a mission, and stuff to do in order to keep his mission alive. This can function both as an answer to Pi’s existential questions as a boy (Why does God care about us at all?) but also as a basis for secular morality. The “meaning of life,” Pi seems to say, comes from our relationships with others, not from any absolute internal sense, nor from any absolute external lawgiver.

To a rationalist this is a little naive, however, as commitment to the idea of the plurality (or worse, relativity) of truths does not have much practical utility. It stifles progress in the name of tolerance, even when those same people could be benefited by the progress at stake. Pi seems to suggest that we can believe whatever we want to believe because truths are personal. This ignores how beliefs motivate behaviour. A dismissal of the need to hold beliefs that describe the world accurately, is a dismissal of all the moral consequences of doing so. As David Deutsch says, "All evil is caused by a lack of knowledge."

I see the movie as a theological statement about the power of hope, spirituality, and drive in a natural world that is sometimes hostile.  Given the plurality of truths, there are multiple paths to happiness and many peaks on the spiritual landscape.