Life of PI is a fiction film produced by David Womack in 2012. This fiction film was based on a 2001 novel of the same title written by Yann Martel. The film was directed by Angie Lee and stars Adil Hussain, Gerard Depardieu, Tabu and others. The film grossed $609 million on a budget of $120 million making it a box office hit. The film is based on the life story of Piscine Molitor, a resident of Canada of Indian descent whose family got drowned in a ship wreck while attempting to emigrate from their native India to Canada. The film has been critically acclaimed and it won four academy awards during the 85th Academy Awards.
The film begins when a Canadian writer, Yann Martel, asks PI Patel, an Indian for a book good enough for publication. PI responds by giving Yann Martel the account of his life story. PI starts his story by recounting a flash back on how his father named him after a swimming pool in France. The swimming pool was called Piscine Molitor, the same name his father gave to him, despite the fact that his father was not a swimming enthusiast. As a result of being teased in school because his name sounds like pissing, he changed his name to PI which sounds as the Greek alphabet π.
His family ran a zoo in India and among the animals there was a Bengal tiger. The tiger was curiously named Richard Parker. In response to his attempt to feed the tiger through the bars of its cage, PI’s father made him to watch the animal devour a live goat. This was to make him aware of how dangerous the tiger is. As a result of some unfavourable political developments in their native India, PI’s family decide to relocate to Canada. They join a Japanese ship on route to Canada. The ship encounters a storm in the Pacific Ocean and sinks. PI’s family was lost along with the crew members and most of the zoo animals. PI survives on a life boat. Initial survivors of this disaster were PI himself, the Bengal tiger, a spotted hyena and an orang-utan. The hyena kills both the zebra and the orang-utan. However, the Bengal tiger comes out from his hiding place and kills the hyena. The rest of the film details how he, along with the Bengal tiger, survives for 227 days on the high sea eventually landing in the coast of Mexico where he was rescued.
