
This book has been a very popular book, both critically and by general readers.
To be honest, while I enjoy the book, it is hardly one of my favorites, in a way it is reminesce of other youth survival naratives like Gary Paulson's young-adult fiction novel Hatchet.
Life of Pi
In this regard, in order to get the full "impact" of the story, it cannot just be a novel about a young Indian boy from Pondicherry who through a unique series of events ends up lost in the Pacific Ocean on a boat with a Bengal tiger, a wounded zebra, and an orangutan.
Telling this story, would mean that the majority of screen time would be filled with a single character and a tiger. With many people familiar with the source material, veering from the history, religion, and emotion of this story would be very challenging, not to mention the complexities of filming a story where an animal plays a central character, and it's not a monkey who dances around in a bikini with a cigar.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought Shyamalan could pull of this film, and at one point it was a possibility, but in 2005 M. Night Shyamalan was replaced by Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mama Tambien) to direct. Yet obviously, that didn't happen...and earlier this year Variety has reported that Ang Lee will be directing a film adaptation of Life of Pi.

All the same, I think if Ang Lee or anyone else is capable of successfully pulling off a film adaptation of this story that their is true art and mastery in their work, because frankly I think there are far to many challenges to capture this story in a way that is engaging, captures the uniqueness of the source material, and is cinematicly cohesive.
2 comments:
Actually, at one point Jean-Pierre Jeunet was connected to the project. In fact, I thought he still was.
To me, that was a marriage made in heaven. Ah well.
I would've loved to see Federico Fellini take on this a la "Satyricon".
Alas Lee will do for now...Peter Jackson would be good too...maybe.
Post a Comment