“When I first read The Tale of Pi, I thought no sane person would make a movie out of it.”, agrees Ang Lee. From M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) to Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain) through Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), many have tried to adapt Quebecer Yann Martel’s mystical-epic bestseller… in vain. I must say, it took a certain audacity to captivate the audience for two hours by recounting the journey of a young Indian and a tiger drifting alone across the Pacific!
“Handicapped track”
The challenge gets even tougher as the adventures of Piscine Molitor Patel, aka Pi, bring together the directors’ three tame habits: making movies with kids, animals, and water. But it takes more to slow the Taiwanese filmmaker, who won an Oscar for Best Director. The Secret of Brokeback Mountain : “I accepted because it was an absolutely impossible project! I’ve dedicated four years to it and it was an obstacle course every step of the way.” The main obstacle: the ocean. To facilitate production, Lee’s idea of building a huge basin of 6.4 million liters (the largest ever made) of water in Taiwan to simulate storms is a good idea. During the studies, the filmmaker is looking for his hero. He doesn’t want to hear about the stars, he chooses 3,000 young people from all over the world. The friendliness of Suraj Sharma (she was 17 at the time of filming) immediately won him over. But a new challenge: This son of an economist and computer engineer can’t swim! However, some sequences require you to hold your breath underwater for at least a minute… Lee said, “Luckily, Suraj wasn’t scared. He became a real swimmer and did the acrobatics himself.” For the New Delhi teen, the movie experience turns into a true beginner’s journey. Like Pi the heroine, she accepts everything, does yoga intensely and eats tuna and salad to lose weight gradually. To make it credible, Suraj was introduced to high sea survival by Steven Callahan, a survivor who survived seventy-six days on a life raft in the Atlantic. A beginner yet, it takes double his imagination to play against the void.
Stunning realism
Because Richard Parker, whose main partner is a Bengal tiger, was created entirely from computer graphics! Insurers forbidding an actor and a real tiger to be on the same plane. The young actor did not even come close to one of the four real monsters on the set. These were used for shots where the cat was alone and served as a reference for 3D animators. The team thus recreated the felines step by step; first the skeleton, then the muscles, and finally the coat. It will take 700 designers and more than a year and a half of post production to bring the tiger to life. The result is surprisingly realistic. At the 2013 Oscars, this dreamy tale of searching for God was the most awarded film with four statuettes, including Best Director.
Life of PiWednesday, July 12 at 20:55 Arte
Uriel Ceillier
Source: Programme Television
Joseph Fearn is an entertainment and television aficionado who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a keen eye for what’s hot in the world of TV, Joseph keeps his readers informed about the latest trends and must-see shows.
