The photography in the movie, “Life with Pi”, is evocative of both The Titanic and The Black Stallion, and that’s the kind of movie I was prepared to see last night.
It’s the kind of boy meets tiger saga that fills you with certain expectations: the boy and the tiger will be soulmates, and the movie will end with a heartfelt friendship that makes all those hours of watching them circle each other in the lifeboat worthwhile. It is not the kind of movie that leads you to anticipate a twist at the end.
But in fact there is a twist, and it is that twist in Life of Pi that to me is more reminiscent of the Michael Oher fact-based movie Blindside.
At the end of the movie we learn that there is another, darker possibility than the light hearted one we have watched as it played out. We learn that the entire movie may well be just a metaphor for the unbearable reality of what happened on that lifeboat.
And that reminded me of the moment in Blindside when Sandra Bullock’s character asks Michael Oher how he survived the brutal reality of his childhood. He explains that when “bad things” are happening, his mom tells him to close his eyes and think of something nice. And when the bad things are over, he is to open his eyes and pretend nothing bad ever happened.
Creating a metaphor for the
unbearable to make it bearable; closing your eyes and mind to an unacceptable
reality, and creating another interior reality are coping mechanisms.
