Roger Ebert Home
Cast and Crew

Yann Martel

Find on IMDB

Find on Wikipedia

Reviews

Life of Pi (2012)
Roger Ebert

Based on the novel by

Blog Posts

Roger Ebert

His eyes are on the tiger

Roger Ebert  |  2012-11-20

Again this week, I'm double-posting a major review to permit your comments, which my main site can't accept--although they'll be added to our redesign, soon to be unveiled.

Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a triumph over its difficulties. It is also a moving spiritual achievement, a movie whose title could have been shortened to "life."

Interviews

Ang Lee: Of water and Pi

Roger Ebert  |  2012-11-17

"This is the best use of 3-D I've ever seen," I say to Ang Lee. And I mean it. His "Life of Pi," based on Yann Martel's novel about a shipwrecked boy, is an astonishment, not least because it never uses 3-D for its effect, but instead as a framing device for the story as a whole. There are, for example, shots where the point of view is below the sea's surface, looking up at the boat and into the sky beyond. The surface of the sea seems to be an invisible membrane between the water and the air. I've never seen anything like it.