Movie Analysis  film showing:

Title:  Life of Pie

Genre:  FICTION -FANTASY

Characters:

Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) - The protagonist of the story. Piscine is the narrator for most of the novel, and his account of his seven months at sea forms the bulk of the story. He gets his unusual name from the French word for pool—and, more specifically, from a pool in Paris in which a close family friend, Francis Adirubasamy, loved to swim. A student of zoology and religion, Pi is deeply intrigued by the habits and characteristics of animals and people.

Richard Parker -  The Royal Bengal tiger with whom Pi shares his lifeboat. His captor, Richard Parker, named him Thirsty, but a shipping clerk made a mistake and reversed their names. From then on, at the Pondicherry Zoo, he was known as Richard Parker. Weighing 450 pounds and about nine feet long, he kills the hyena on the lifeboat and the blind cannibal. With Pi, however, Richard Parker acts as an omega, or submissive, animal, respecting Pi’s dominance.

The Author -  The narrator of the (fictitious) Author’s Note, who inserts himself into the narrative at several points throughout the text. Though the author who pens the Author’s Note never identifies himself by name, there are many clues that indicate it is Yann Martel himself, thinly disguised: he lives in Canada, has published two books, and was inspired to write Pi’s life story during a trip to India.

Francis Adirubasamy -  The elderly man who tells the author Pi’s story during a chance meeting in a Pondicherry coffee shop. He taught Pi to swim as a child and bestowed upon him his unusual moniker. He arranges for the author to meet Pi in person, so as to get a first-person account of his strange and compelling tale. Pi calls him Mamaji, an Indian term that meansrespected uncle.

Ravi -  Pi’s older brother. Ravi prefers sports to schoolwork and is quite popular. He teases his younger brother mercilessly over his devotion to three religions.

Santosh Patel -  Pi’s father. He once owned a Madras hotel, but because of his deep interest in animals decided to run the Pondicherry Zoo. A worrier by nature, he teaches his sons not only to care for and control wild animals, but to fear them. Though raised a Hindu, he is not religious and is puzzled by Pi’s adoption of numerous religions. The difficult conditions in India lead him to move his family to Canada.

Gita Patel -  Pi’s beloved mother and protector. A book lover, she encourages Pi to read widely. Raised Hindu with a Baptist education, she does not subscribe to any religion and questions Pi’s religious declarations. She speaks her mind, letting her husband know when she disagrees with his parenting techniques. When Pi relates another version of his story to his rescuers, she takes the place of Orange Juice on the lifeboat.

Satish Kumar -  Pi’s atheistic biology teacher at Petit Séminaire, a secondary school in Pondicherry. A polio survivor, he is an odd-looking man, with a body shaped like a triangle. His devotion to the power of scientific inquiry and explanation inspires Pi to study zoology in college.

Father Martin - The Catholic priest who introduces Pi to Christianity after Pi wanders into his church. He preaches a message of love. He, the Muslim Mr. Kumar, and the Hindu pandit disagree about whose religion Pi should practice.

Satish Kumar -  A plain-featured Muslim mystic with the same name as Pi’s biology teacher. He works in a bakery. Like the other Mr. Kumar, this one has a strong effect on Pi’s academic plans: his faith leads Pi to study religion at college.

The Hindu Pandit -  One of three important religious figures in the novel. Never given a name, he is outraged when Pi, who was raised Hindu, begins practicing other religions. He and the other two religious leaders are quieted somewhat by Pi’s declaration that he just wants to love God.

Meena Patel -  Pi’s wife, whom the author meets briefly in Toronto.

Nikhil Patel (Nick) -  Pi’s son. He plays baseball.

Usha Patel -  Pi’s young daughter. She is shy but very close to her father.

The Hyena -  An ugly, intensely violent animal. He controls the lifeboat before Richard Parker emerges.

The Zebra -  A beautiful male Grant’s zebra. He breaks his leg jumping into the lifeboat. The hyena torments him and eats him alive.

Orange Juice -  The maternal orangutan that floats to the lifeboat on a raft of bananas. She suffers almost humanlike bouts of loneliness and seasickness. When the hyena attacks her, she fights back valiantly but is nonetheless killed and decapitated.

The Blind Frenchman - A fellow castaway whom Pi meets by chance in the middle of the ocean. Driven by hunger and desperation, he tries to kill and cannibalize Pi, but Richard Parker kills him first.

Tomohiro Okamoto -  An official from the Maritime Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport, who is investigating the sinking of the Japanese Tsimtsum. Along with his assistant, Atsuro Chiba, Okamoto interviews Pi for three hours and is highly skeptical of his first account.

Atsuro Chiba -  Okamoto’s assistant. Chiba is the more naïve and trusting of the two Japanese officials, and his inexperience at conducting interviews gets on his superior’s nerves. Chiba agrees with Pi that the version of his ordeal with animals is the better than the one with people.

The Cook -  The human counterpart to the hyena in Pi’s second story. He is rude and violent and hoards food on the lifeboat. After he kills the sailor and Pi’s mother, Pi stabs him and he dies.

The Sailor -  The human counterpart to the zebra in Pi’s second story. He is young, beautiful, and exotic. He speaks only Chinese and is very sad and lonely in the lifeboat. He broke his leg jumping off the ship, and it becomes infected. The cook cuts off the leg, and the sailor dies slowly.

Setting: India, Pacific Ocean, Mexico and Canada.

Plot:  

Life of Pi is divided into three sections.

In the first section, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.
Pi is raised a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God.He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
Eventually, his family decides to sell their zoo over a land dispute with the government, and sell the animals to various zoos around the world before emigrating to Canada.

In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks on a Japanese freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and sinks, resulting in his family's death. During the storm, Pi escapes death in a small lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan.
As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is discovered that a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin; it kills and eats the hyena. Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of flotation devices, tethers it to the boat, and retreats to it. He delivers some of the fish and water he harvests to Richard Parker to keep him satisfied, conditioning Richard Parker not to threaten him by rocking the boat and causing seasickness while blowing a whistle. Eventually, Richard Parker learns to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat.
Pi recounts various events while adrift, including discovering an island of carnivorous algae inhabited by meerkats. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.

In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain why the ship sank. When they do not believe his story, he tells an alternative story of human brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself.
After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".

Theme:

Religion

At times, Life of Pi reads like a defense of religion. Has science proved religion wrong? Here's a protagonist who believes passionately in both zoology and religion. What about the fact of multiple faiths? Don't these faiths contradict each other, cause wars, and other problems? Here's a protagonist who is Muslim, Christian, and Hindu – all at the same time. The book defends not only the common spirit behind these three religions, but the rituals and ceremonies of each. It's as if all three religions find harmonious common ground in this character. Seems unlikely, but then again, the protagonist argues passionately that the miraculous happens in our darkest moments.

Literature and Writing

In his essay "How I Wrote Life of Pi," Yann Martel says, "I had neither family nor career to show for my 33 years on Earth. [...]. I was in need of a story. More than that, I was in need of a Story." Martel's novel is full of ruminations on writing and the meaning writing and literature give to our lives. In fact, Martel's character, Pi, argues we should choose the most compelling story when we have no confirmation of actual events. Suspicious? Intrigued? You've fallen right into Martel's trap.

Man and the Natural World

There's an interesting blurring of divisions between man and the natural world in Life of Pi. Human beings become more animalistic; animals become more human. The novel warns against projecting human values onto the animal world. However, the novel also admits it's impossible to experience anything without a way-of-being. The trick, therefore, is to make concessions to other species. Animals in the zoo, while essentially retaining their instincts, take on certain domestic, human-like traits. Human beings in the wild, while still retaining a few human traits, become more animalistic. Through this exchange human beings may learn – dare we say it – a spiritual truth or two about themselves and the natural world.

Spirituality

This theme often brings to mind more ethereal subjects like the soul or the soul's rebirth. You'd be both right and wrong applying such lofty thoughts to Life of Pi. In this book, spirituality grounds itself in the everyday. The most ordinary activities take on a level of spiritual intensity (granted they happen in an extraordinary setting). Often, the protagonist describes – perhaps with a little jealousy – animals engaging their surroundings with an almost yogic discipline. Of course, this is not to say spirituality is always fun and games. Sometimes suffering and duress actually bring about the protagonist's spiritual insights. In fact, except for the protagonist's suffering, spirituality might have a more limited role in the novel.

Suffering

Suffering brings out the best and the worst in Life of Pi's characters. On the one hand, the characters care for each other when they very well could have killed each other. On the other hand, suffering drives a few characters to murder and cannibalism. There's a moment in the book when the protagonist catches a dorado fish. To subdue it, he beats it with a hatchet. He says, "I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death" (2.60.31). Whoever or whatever causes suffering in this novel – God or a bizarre sequence of events – the characters' musings and fortitude through it all recall the sheen and flash of a rainbow

Science

Don't get us wrong. The protagonist of Life of Pi loves science. Science, along with reason, helps us control and manipulate the world. It's how we survive in the world. But Pi points out that like religion, science has an element of faith in it. Unlike agnosticism, where the person doesn't commit to either faith or disbelief, the scientist often commits to a worldview of atheism and to the methods of his discipline. For the protagonist of Life of Pi, though, this isn't enough. We have to embrace the irrational and miraculous if we're to have a full picture of our universe. Science can explain the world up to a certain point, but its usefulness ends. According to Pi, when things get really hairy, religion has to step in with a good old-fashioned story.

Fear

If we have nothing to fear but fear itself, what about the fear of fear itself? Does that count as two fears or is it still one fear? It's this type of mind game our protagonist has to avoid on the lifeboat. Pi has to fight against being crippled by fear, as he goes about the everyday business of survival. He definitely has a lot of things to be afraid of – bone-crunching waves, man-eating sharks, and conniving tigers, to name a few. Of course, fear also takes on an existential component in the novel, meaning that Pi also has to deal with the terror of isolation, meaninglessness, and boredom. When faced with the latter types of emptiness, maybe fighting off sharks and tigers doesn't sound so bad

Mortality

The protagonist in Life of Pi battles death for so long, his relationship with death becomes very complex. Death is the thing he must push as far away from himself as possible. Death is also part of life, and our protagonist begrudgingly admits this fact. He seeks death. He runs away from death. By the end of the novel, our protagonist might as well have dated death. They love each other, but used to hate each other. They've broken up a couple times. They've gotten back together. They're together but seeing other people.

Madness

You knew we were going to say this: madness is a little complicated inLife of Pi. Is faith a form of madness? Is the madness that causes animals to leave a warm, secure home the same as the madness of murder and cannibalism? Is the predator-prey relationship, so common in both natural and man-made worlds, a form of madness? Of course, like the good novelist he is, Martel leaves most of these questions open. If believing in beautiful stories, and in fictions that guide and explain our lives, counts as madness, then Martel suggests a little madness will do us a lot of good.

Symbolism:

Pi

Piscine Molitor Patel’s preferred moniker is more than just a shortened version of his given name. Indeed, the word Pi carries a host of relevant associations. It is a letter in the Greek alphabet that also contains alpha andomega, terms used in the book to denote dominant and submissive creatures. Pi is also an irrational mathematical number, used to calculate distance in a circle. Often shortened to 3.14, pi has so many decimal places that the human mind can’t accurately comprehend it, just as, the book argues, some realities are too difficult or troubling to face. These associations establish the character Pi as more than just a realistic protagonist; he also is an allegorical figure with multiple layers of meaning.

The Color Orange

In Life of Pi, the color orange symbolizes hope and survival. Just before the scene in which the Tsimtsum sinks, the narrator describes visiting the adult Pi at his home in Canada and meeting his family.  The color of the tiger is orange Richard Parker, who helps Pi survive during his227 days at sea. As the Tsimtsum sinks, Chinese crewmen give Pi a lifejacket with an orange whistle; on the boat, he finds an orange lifebuoy. The whistle, buoy, and tiger all help Pi survive, just as Orange Juice the orangutan provides a measure of emotional support that helps the boy maintain hope in the face of horrific tragedy.

                                     
1. What does the title mean in relation to the film as a whole?

The title LIFE OF PI mean in relation to the film that it shows how PI suffering in he’s life at sea.

2. Among the characters, to whom can you relate to?

I can relate to PI because I really admire of he’s strong personality that it shows in me that no matter what happen in life I will be strong to face the situation and  it can attract me most on how he can handle the situation at sea of what hardship he face he had still fate in GOD.

3. Which part of the presentation struck you the most? Why?

In part that I struck me most when he can’t do it to kill JOHN PARKER so many times because he so much pity to that animals.

4. What is the movie’s message?

Movie’s message in me that no matter what happen in our life we still strong because the hardship it’s only trials  in us that we are encounter is can bring in us the experiences and so that we can move on. The only way to survive in life and need some help is our faith to GOD. It give me a message that I will be able for being a positive person all the times.

5. Did I like this in general? Why?

Yes because it shows me what is the reality in this world that if we lose hope we give up for nothing. So I must consider life is God given and so precious if we know on how to treasure it for most of the times. I also thankful to watch this movie that it shows in me that it is also happen in real life and I   so much amaze in some part that I could not believe that I only see this in the fantasy or in the fairytales. Anyway, I just believe in the saying that “everything happens for a reason but sometimes I wish I knew what that reason was.” There are some says Life stops when you are stop dreaming while other says Hope ends when you stop believing. So I must enjoy my life here on earth so that I consider it so precious.

6. Did I agree with the main theme/purpose? Why or why not?

YES, simply because it shows about feelings/emotion, experiences, about he’s surroundings and moral aspect of   PI.

 
7. What specifically did I like/dislike? Why?

I like the strong personality of PI though he struggle at sea in 227days he still have faith in God.

8. Are there any aspects of theme which are left ambiguous at the end? Why?

When PI stranded in one island that have different kinds of animals there and when he going to sleep he found out that there’s a teeth inside the flower and that time he leave the island cause maybe he thinks that island  is not safe to stay there because an island are carnivurous.

 9. How does this film relate to the things that are happening in your life?

It can relate in me for being a strong person all the times, have courage to face the reality, being knowledgeable, open- minded, being positive person , don’t  lose hope and most important is faith in God.