Ang Lee's "The Fantasy Drift of the Young Pi" is a great movie, in this movie, Ang Lee uses the clues of true and false to construct a huge narrative labyrinth, the surface of the labyrinth is fantastic and charming, but the inside is dark and obscure.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > in order to survive, you have to learn to tell stories</h1>
Many people watch "The Fantasy Drift of Young Pi" and ignore a very important character - the writer. Some people may think that the writer is just a tool for the guide to tell the story, but it is not so simple.
If the movie is just about telling the story of drifting, then it only needs to be told to the Japanese investigators, and there is no need for one more tool man.
The existence of the writer, the guide school tells the life before the drift. At the same time, the writer also stressed the importance of storytelling, saying that Mama Ji told him that Pie had a story that would make him believe in God. The story is no longer a simple story, it is related to faith.
Regarding the importance of "telling" stories, Ang Lee is tirelessly hinted at in the film, the most obvious of which is the name of the "telling" school.
The father followed the advice of his mother Ji and named his son with the name of a pure swimming pool, "Ben Xin", hoping that his heart would be pure, but when this name came to the mouth of his classmates, it became a dirty "urine", and Ben Xin used Pi "Pie" to explain his name in order to beautify his name.
Many people think that the name "Pie" has some profound meaning, I think that Ang Lee is saying here, the same name, in different perspectives, has different meanings, the important thing is not the meaning, but how to tell.
This is also reflected in the Buddhist on the ship, who does not eat meat, but there is no vegetarian dish on the ship, so he has to eat broth, he said: "The broth is not meat, just taste." "You see, he changed the scope of application of the precepts of faith by speaking.
Sent in the survival guide on the ship, one of the points is to suggest storytelling.
Coupled with the fact that Pi believes in Hinduism through his mother's telling of Hindu mythology, Christianity through priests telling the story of Christ's crucifixion, and Pie telling the story of his own drifting from the perspective of fantasy and reality, it can be said that "The Fantasy Drifting of Young Pi" is a movie about storytelling.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a darker third layer of stories</h1>
When you understand the importance of storytelling, you will understand why Pai has to invent a fantasy story.
The first story pi tells: on the night of the shipwreck, he jumped on the lifeboat, and then a zebra jumped into the boat, and the waves rushed the squid "Harry" into the boat, sent a lifebuoy to rescue the tiger "Richard Parker", and the next day, Pi rescued the orangutan "orange juice" sitting on a banana.
Then, the mane wants to eat the bruised zebra, the orangutan roars and beats the mane, the mane bites the orangutan, and the tiger rushes out to bite the dead mane. Later, the tiger discovered that there was a rat on the boat, and the tiger ate the rat as well.
After that, the faction trained tigers, one man and one tiger drifting in the Pacific Ocean, and just when they were desperate, the lifeboat docked on an island with fresh water and edible plant roots, but at night, the pie found that the island was a man-eating island, so a man and a tiger began to drift again, and finally drifted to Mexico to be rescued.
It's a story that's hard to convince adults, so Pie tells a second story.
On the lifeboat, there were originally two people, the cook and the Buddhist sailor, and the cook rescued the pie on the boat with a lifebuoy, and the next day, the mother of the pie came to the lifeboat with a banana. When the chef found a rat on the boat, he killed the rat and ate it. The sailor broke his leg when he jumped into the lifeboat, the wound became infected, and the chef suggested cutting off the leg to avoid worsening the infection, but the result was that the sailor was directly killed.
After the sailor died, the cook fished with the bait of the sailor's meat, and the mother was very angry and slapped the cook, but the chef did not fight back. The chef not only makes bait with the waterman's meat, he also eats the sailor's meat directly.
A week later, because Pie didn't catch a turtle, the chef punched Pie, and his mother desperately hit the chef and made Pie jump on the raft. Enraged, the cook killed his mother with a knife, and he threw her body into the sea and was eaten by sharks.
The next day, the cook was killed, and the cook, knowing that his sins were so great, did not resist. Then send a man to drift at sea until rescued.
The second layer of stories corresponds to the first layer of stories, the mane is the cook, the zebra is the sailor, the orangutan is the mother, and the tiger is the pie himself. The second layer of the story seems to be realistic, but there are still irrationalities.
When Japanese investigators listen to the first layer of stories, it is that bananas cannot float on the water, but in the second layer of stories, the mother still grabs bananas like orangutans.
However, someone on the Internet has tried that bananas can float on the surface of the water, so Pie is not wrong. But Ang Lee arranges this plot here, not to emphasize whether bananas can float on the water, but to remind us that both layers of the story are questionable.
The first layer of the story can not be reality, but it is a fable, the realistic characters are compared to human animals, the real things are woven into the metaphor, when telling this story, the least harm to the pie, so the story is the most credible, as long as we understand the symbols and metaphors, we also understand the truth of the facts.
The second layer of the story is realistic, but the most implausible, because the story already involves the real interests of Pi, just as Pi used pi to beautify his name, in this realistic story, Pie must rationalize his behavior, for example, he killed the cook because the cook killed his mother, and he ended up eating only the meat of the "evil man" of the cook. So the second layer of stories, although close to reality, is the most false and untrustworthy.
In the first layer of the story, there is no scene of the orangutan being thrown into the sea and eaten by a shark, while in the second layer of the story, Pie says that his mother was thrown into the sea and eaten by a shark, which is probably due to the fact that he avoided the fact that he ate the mother's meat after eating the chef's meat, because the mother-eater is really difficult to accept.
There is also a very obvious loophole that in the first layer of the story, the rat is eaten by the tiger, so corresponding to the second layer of the story, the mouse should also be sent to eat, but the pie is the rat is killed and eaten by the chef, which is also avoiding the fact that he killed the mouse and ate it.
Human flesh is eaten, so why avoid the fact that rats are eaten? It can only be said that killing rats and eating them is a fact that Pi is more reluctant to admit.
Thus, a darker third layer of story was deduced.
Every animal on the lifeboat corresponds to a person, and the mouse also corresponds to a living person, that is, Pie's girlfriend Ananti.
To prove that the rat is Ananti, you need to push back. After Pai finished telling the story, he said he had lost his family, the zoo, India, Ananda. Pai specifically mentions Ananti, indicating that it is likely that Artie was also on a lifeboat.
On the cannibal island, Pie tied the red rope tied by Ananti to the root of a tree that could be eaten, directly pointing out that Pie had eaten his girlfriend. The red rope has long since discolored and turned miserable white, symbolizing the tragic end of this love.
So Ananti is the rat that was eaten by the tiger. The reason pi can't remember their farewell is because they didn't say goodbye in the first place, and Ananti was sent to hide in a lifeboat and smuggle the family to Canada.
However, helping his girlfriend smuggle, killing his girlfriend, and eating her is something that Pai is extremely reluctant to admit, let alone say it. So in the second story, the mouse is still a mouse, but because of the proximity to reality, he easily thinks that the mouse is his girlfriend, so he does not even want to admit that he ate the mouse, and he passes the responsibility for eating the mouse to the chef.
Pi deliberately avoids details he doesn't want to mention when he tells the story, which is already hinted at in the movie.
When his father asked him to watch the tiger eat the sheep, the sheep was obviously tied outside the iron gate, and when he watched it before, he was very confused about how the tiger dragged the sheep into the door. But the clear-cut narrative deliberately omits certain details, and it suddenly opens up.
Someone must have put the sheep inside the iron gate, that person may have been the father, and it is more likely that the father, in order to teach the pie a profound lesson, forced him to personally lock the sheep inside the iron gate, which caused a psychological shadow for the pie, so he did not mention this detail.
Similarly, when eating at the ship's dining room, Pie wears white clothes, but when he goes down to the cabin to feed the animals, Pie changes to black.
Pai said leaving India was harder for his father. Why did pie say this? In Pie's account, there is not a single mention of anything about the difficulty of leaving India for my father.
Then Pie paused for a moment and said, "I didn't miss anything, did I?" This meaningful narrative just implies that Pie is missing a lot of information here.
When the shipwreck occurred, Pai asked the crew, "Who released the animals?" "Who is it?" In the hidden information of the pie, there is a good chance that there is a truth about the shipwreck, but he does not dare to say it.
Could it be that the father released the animal and wanted it to fall into the sea, but cheated on the insurance? But the animals came out and scurried around, causing a boiler explosion that caused a sinking, and Pai also mentioned that there was a distinct explosion when the shipwreck occurred.
It is even said that on the lifeboat, there are no cooks and sailors at all, but only his family and Ananti.
The zebra is not a sailor, but a father, and the zebra breaks its leg, which matches the characteristics of the father's lame leg.
The mane is not a cook, but an older brother Ravi.
Pai's son is named Ravi, and his name is in honor of his brother, because Pai killed Ravi, but Pai inspired the evil in Pai's heart, and this evil caused him to kill Ananda again. Although evil is evil, in the face of life and death, without this evil, pi cannot survive.
However, in the third layer of the story, in addition to the more obvious hints of sending the mother and killing the girlfriend, other speculations have no more details to confirm, obviously, director Ang Lee is not to tell us what is the truth, in the subjective telling, there can be no real objective truth.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > civilization is storytelling</h1>
Sent to tell the writer two stories, asking the writer which one he believed?
This sentence is also asked to the audience.
Most people will believe the second, but in the movie, the writer and the Japanese investigator choose to believe the first story, they all know that the first story is false, but that is a good story.
This is civilization, civilization is to make my naked body dressed, civilization is to tell stories, let the cruel facts put on a gorgeous coat.
As soon as Pai returned to the civilized world, he turned himself into a great sailor through storytelling, and the cruel cannibalism fact turned into an inspirational survival story, and it was also in the newspaper.
When we open the history of mankind, behind the heroic legends and deeds of great men, how much cruel truth is hidden?
However, blindly pursuing the truth cannot save people and understand the darkness in people's hearts, do we have to abandon civilized rationality and return to animal nature? Obviously not, civilization is false, but it can at least give us a little comfort in our hearts.
That's why Pi tells a fantastic story through which he bids farewell to his bestiality.
In order to survive, you have to learn to tell stories, and it is stories that give meaning to everything we have experienced.