The Life of Pi

Russell Baillie at NZ Herald reports:

As he sat on a wharf bollard to have his photo taken, Ang Lee eyed the Waitemata below with a slight grin.

Maybe it was because the Oscar-winning director, who was in Auckland yesterday, has spent a good deal of the past few years at sea – or in a giant wave tank replicating it – as he filmed Life of Pi.

The movie is a spectacular 3D adaptation of the supposedly unfilmable Yann Martell bestseller which tells of the adventures of a teenage Indian castaway sharing a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker.

The film is great. I saw it a couple of weeks ago at a fundraiser for the Wellington branch of the Sensible Sentencing Trust along with around 150 others.

The reservation many had over the film, was that you will know from the beginning that Richard Parker is a tiger.  But that does not detract from the film.

The animal shots are incredible in 3D. Richard Parker looks magnificent, but everything does. The storm is amazing, the lost island beautiful and the other animals almost human like. The only issue was that the 3D was not done correctly in the first two minutes, and most of the audience were taking their glasses off and on trying to work out what was happening. May have been an issue on that copy only, but anyway was all okay after a couple of minutes.

Definitely a great film to see. Despite the fact you know how it ends if you have read the book, there are some nerve racking scenes on the life boat.