The Life of Pi

The Life of Pi
Written by :  Yann Martel
Directed by:  Ang Lee
123 minutes
Fox Studios (2013)
Ratings: PG
Genre:  Movie

Annotation/Teaser:  When Pi Patel, an Indian storyteller, gets a visit from a writer he is asked to tell his life story.  The story that unfolds is both exciting and a story of survival.

Plot Summary:  Pi Patel starts the story of his childhood in India where his father is a zookeeper.  When the zoo no longer has monetary support, Pi's father announces they must move to Canada.  Once they get there, the animals will be sold and the family will start a new life.  They board all their belongings and the animals on a Japanese cargo ship and a storm crashes the boat causing everyone to die except for Pi, a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker.  Quickly, the tiger becomes hungry and with all the other animals gone, Pi must find a way to survive in a lifeboat with this wild animal.

About the Author: Yann Martel    Yann Martel was born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain, to Emile and Nicole Martel, but spent his childhood living in a variety of different countries, including Costa Rica, France, India, Iran, Mexico, Turkey, Canada, and the United States. His parents, civil servants, were of French-Canadian descent, and their family eventually settled in Montreal.

Martel attended Trent University from 1981 to 1984, but graduated from Concordia University with a BA in philosophy in 1985. After graduating, along with writing and considering a career in politics or anthropology, he worked many different odd jobs—librarian, tree planter, dishwasher, security guard, and parking lot attendant. At the age of 27, he committed himself to writing.

Martel published his first work, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Other Stories, a collection of four short stories, in 1993. It received warm critical reception, although it did not sell well. His first novel, Self, was published three years later, to more mixed reviews, and to similarly small sales. It is a fictional autobiography of the first thirty years of the narrator’s life and involves two spontaneous gender changes.
After these two disappointments, Martel traveled to India to work on a third novel and figure out where his life was headed. He quickly realized the novel he was working on was going nowhere - but then he remembered something he had read about years before, and the idea for Life of Pi came to him.
Life of Pi was published in 2001 to warm, although somewhat mixed, critical reception, and, along with winning the Man Booker Prize, became an international best-seller. Many critics praised the book’s ability to suspend disbelief even as it tells an amazingly fantastical tale. Those that had problems with the book most often referred to what they saw as Martel’s heavy-handedness with the issue of belief in God, which they considered to underestimate both literature and religion. Other critics, however, praised Martel’s handling of the potentially controversial religious material.
At the height of the book’s popularity, there was a short-lived scandal involving an accusation of plagiarism. Martel has acknowledged that he thought of the premise after reading a review of the English translation of Moacyr Scliar’s Max and the Cats; the Brazilian press accused Martel of cribbing that book. The similarities between the books, however, are few, and nothing came of the charges.
Martel is currently based in Montreal, although he frequently lives internationally. In 2002 and 2003, Martel worked as a professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

Yann Martel (n.d.)  Retrieved from www.gradesaver.com

About the Director:   Ang Lee 

Ang Lee was born on October 23, 1954, in Taipei, Taiwan. He attended the National Taiwan College of Arts and then traveled to the United States, where he studied at the University of Illinois and NYU. Lee's directorial debut was Pushing Hands in 1992. Later films include Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In 2006, Lee became the first Asian to win an Academy Award for best director, for the film Brokeback Mountain. Lee married Jane Lin in 1982 and they have two children.
  Ang Lee is a film director, producer and screenwriter who was born on October 23, 1954, in Taipei, Taiwan. Lee attended the National Taiwan College of Arts, where he graduated in 1975. He then relocated to the United States, where he studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and New York University.

Ang Lee made his directorial debut in 1992 with Pushing Hands and earned Academy Award nominations for his next two films, The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Later films include Sense and Sensibility (1995), starring, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett and Hugh Grant, and for which Lee earned an Academy Award nomination for best picture; The Ice Storm (1997); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), for which he received four Oscars, four BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award for best director; and Hulk (2003).
Lee went on to direct Se, jie (2007) and Taking Woodstock (2009). In 2006, he became the first Asian to win an Academy Award for best director, for his film Brokeback Mountain, a small-budget, low-profile independent film based on Annie Proulx's short story about gay ranch hands, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall
Seven years later, in 2013, Lee picked up his second Academy Award for directing Life of Pi, based on the acclaimed best-selling novel by Yann Martel. The honor marked the first time a director won the Best Director Oscar for helming a 3-D movie. Life of Pi also garnered awards for cinematography, score and visual effects.
Lee married Jane Lin in 1982. The couple has two two children.

Ang Lee Bio (n.d.)  Retrieved from www.biography.com

Critical Evaluation:  I have to admit when I first saw the trailer for Life of Pi,  I was not that interested.  But the more I heard about it the more intrigued I became.  This movie is fabulous.  The best part of this movie was the life-like, computer-generated bengal tiger, Richard Parker.  This beast is so life-like that he makes you forget he is computer generated.  From his movements (jumping, crouching, eating, etc.) to the way he looks when he sleeps, he is convincingly real.  Admittedly, there are many films which are beautiful visually, but most don't have the emotionally gripping story of this one.  The story, told through Pi, is a brilliant work of art as well.  The majority of this movie was set on water with one human character, and with even that fact in mind, this movie is a brilliant work.

Curriculum Ties:  English

Book Talk Ideas:  What if you not only had to survive on the open ocean, you also had to make sure you weren't lunch for a bengal tiger?

Controversial Issues:  Religions (Christianity, Hindu, and Islam)

Defense: 

*I will keep the library's selection policy on hand and memorized with a good understanding  of the standards and policies to show that the selection meets the standards. 

*I will keep good and bad reviews (both electronic and print) and make sure they are from reliable and respected sources such as School of Library Journal, Booklist, and YALSA. I will have copies of these reviews to give away. 

*I will confirm the library's position to provide intellectual freedom as stated in the Library Bill of Rights and keep a copy of this.

*I will keep a written rationale to justify the reasons this material is included in the collection, such as educational significance and curriculum ties.

*I will be respectful and calm and practice "active listening".

*I will make sure I read the material and are very familiar with it.

* I will keep a reconsideration form on file in the event that my other strategies don't work. 

 
Why I Included This Movie:  The images and story of this movie are equally beautiful.  This is a great movie for all ages but especially young adults because of the age and realness of the main character, Pi.