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Life of Pi

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Leonid

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I remember some principles being stated, but the bulk of the action/plot had none that I could tell.

Mostly, it was a "yarn": a plot that goes to and for, keeping my interest.

And, it ended with a bit of a gimmicky twist, which was fine too. There's a message in the twist itself: people sometimes use psychological sublimation as a defense mechanism. I didn't think it had any other message supported by the action and characters.

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If a boy sublimated himself into the tiger, then this is story about that one could struggle and defeat his own fears. If he really had to face the tiger, which represents the existential threat and learn not only how to live with it but to turn it to his survival advantage, then the story has deep philosophical implications. That why I love the second version more than first. 

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One philosophical explanation is that the movie is about why people believe in God.

 

Pi tells two stories of his survival. One is an uplifting tale about animals and Pi coming to terms with a tiger companion. The other is about a bunch of terrified humans slaughtering and eating each other. Pi offers no direct evidence as to which is actually true. Pi claims that when he tells people these two stories, they choose to believe the nicer one because it is more comforting. And so it is with God. We don't know if he if he exists, but it is comforting to believe he does, so we do.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is the one of points, the minor one. The whole religious part of the movie and the book is rather humorous. The boy is an adept of 3 mayor religions-Christianity, Islam and Hinduism and he is rejected by all three. 

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