Watching Life of Pi After Reading It..

I normally never like a movie based on a book if I have read the book already. The movie tend to compress the feeling of reading the book and seriously hamper it. And many times they try to alter the book and screws the whole thing up. Movie version of Love At The Time Of Cholera is the example of former and that of Around The World In 80 Days is an example of latter. But Ang Lee's Life Of Pi is an exception. 

I happened to watch it on 3D last weekend from Inox in Central Mall, J P Nagar. Much praise has been heaped on the movie already by those who watched it. All are going gaga over the direction, acting, special effects and the story in many platforms and I don't feel like repeating those praises. Let me just list out a few points that I felt after watching the movie version about why I loved the movie. 

The novel Life Of Pi by Yann Martel is probably one of the most difficult of the stories to make into a good movie. First of all it requires a mammoth effort to make it convincing due to the story line- that of a kid surviving in sea for months in the company of a Bengal Tiger. Another problem is the monotony that may arise after a while as there are only two characters to carry the movie forward and one of it has to be made entirely out of graphics. But to the credit of Ang Lee, he has made a movie that is convincing as well as interesting. 

After watching the movie, I started appreciating the book better. I was comparing the visual images that the novel created in my mind with that of what I watched on screen. And they were matching. I can now see that Yann Martel, while writing the novel has given everything, every detailing, imagery and vision for Ang Lee to picture the movie brilliantly. And Ang Lee has followed the writer faithfully without omitting anything that can tamper the soul of his vision making a visual master piece. That is where a book and its movie version compliment each other perfectly.