Screening Belief: The Life of Pi, Computer Generated Imagery, and Religious Imagination

Rachel Wagner

doi:10.3390/rel7080096

Abstract

Ang Lee’s The Life of Pi is based on Yann Martel’s novel of the same name. The film expands upon the novel’s fantastic story through the integration of new visual metaphors that invite religious reflection, and is reinforced by religious rituals within and beyond the film itself. Martel’s novel invites readers to believe Pi’s story without seeing it. Viewers of the film, by contrast, are invited to believe Pi’s story precisely because they are seeing it so vividly. Ang Lee constructs a filmic world using such elaborately developed CGI (computer-generated imagery) that the film exhibits only a vestigial relationship to the real-life animals and locations used in its creation. Indeed, it is impossible to make sense of the film’s extensive use of religious themes and rituals without understanding its use of immersive visual effects. For Ang Lee, the manufacture of a seamless, aesthetically appealing CGI world was a means of visually affirming the broadly conceived notions of interconnectedness and purpose that he borrowed from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Jewish mysticism.

Highlights

Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi was originally deemed “unfilmable,” and it was not until directorAng Lee was brought on board that this assessment changed [1]
As we shall see, he describes the making of the film and the effect he hopes to render in the audience in consistently “spiritual” terms
This question appears at the end of the film as well, where instead of reflecting back on a sprawling written story as the “better” one, it points to the compelling visual images that viewers have just seen

Summary

Introduction

Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi was originally deemed “unfilmable,” and it was not until director. This question appears at the end of the film as well, where instead of reflecting back on a sprawling written story as the “better” one, it points to the compelling visual images that viewers have just seen Both novel and film purport that the “better story” involves Pi’s survival with Richard Parker; but whereas Martel must rely on vividly narrated descriptions of these interactions, Ang Lee presents us with a sparsely narrated visual portrait in which the natural environment participates in a visual dialogue with Pi Patel enriched through extensive use of CGI. The film is both myth and ritual, incorporating elements of both, reinforced by digital design intended to frame the ordinary as spectacular

Rituals and Tropes

Visual Effects

Findings

Conclusions