Two Films by Kôji Wakamatsu

No, the two films by Kôji Wakamatsu that I recently watched are not Criterion films, but if I had a bet to make on an auteur whose work may eventually make it into Criterion, this would be a safe one to make.  He started directing in what is considered the Japanese New Wave, he’s Japanese (Criterion seems to like Japanese directors), he’s not commercial, but his work tackles significant issues regarding post-WWII Japan and is critically acclaimed.  To chalk him up as merely a pinku director is giving him way too short of shrift, at least given the two films I’ve watched.  There’s another good reason why Criterion might turn an eye to him sometime – most of his works are not available in the US.

To say I checked him out because he made a movie called 11.25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate (2012) (a biopic about Yukio Mishima’s last years) is not quite accurate, as United Red Army (2007) and Caterpillar (2010) were already in my Netflix cue before I even knew about the Mishima movie meant something I had read previously compelled me to look Wakamatsu up.  Both films focus on historical time periods, both films are incredibly brutal, both films are not fun to watch, and both films are unflinching in their negative portrayal of the Japanese.  I can’t imagine that these two films grossed very much at the Japanese box office.  Unfortunately, the next project he was going to work on, which centered on the Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese nuclear lobby, will never come to light, as Wakamatsu was hit by a taxi and died last year.

United Red Army is three hours and ten minutes long.  When flipping through my cue, I would see that, cringe, and move on (I do the same thing with Intolerance).  Finally, given the extra incentive of learning more about a director who made a movie on Mishima, I bit.  It’s a film about the Japanese communist movement of the late-1960s / early-1970s, mostly populated by idealistic students sick of the capitalist, pro-American government and their policies.  Mishima was on the other side of this battle, with the ultra-militarists (reinstate the Emperor) who were against the capitalist, pro-American government and their policies.  He once went to a university to talk to the students.  Nothing really came of the talk, but it is very interesting to learn more about the background of this ideological antithesis who ultimately wanted the same thing Mishima did.

I’ve seen The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008 [interesting that these two films were made around the same time]), so I knew a little bit about what was going on in Germany.  Also interesting that these two radical movements were coming out of Axis power countries, youth born during and directly after WWII coming to terms (or not) with their countries’ recent pasts and reacting.  Wakamatsu was actually part of the movement for a time but left, so he has a unique perspective into what happened.  Some reviews I’ve read say that he tries to go out of his way to create an unbiased account of what happened, and his jutsuroku (combining actual footage with acted footage to create a docu-drama sort of feel) approach strives to be a kind of historical recounting, but I disagree that this is impartial.  He chose the subject matter.  He even funded the film himself when no one would give him money to “set history straight,” as it were.  He used his own house and wrecked part of it for the finale of the film.  And if you wish to maintain that describing the internal purge within the group, which takes up much of the second part of the film (the first part concentrating on how the groups and factions formed and the third [last] part on the siege of an inn in Asama), as being unbiased, then you’re wrong.  This was a personal film for Wakamatsu.

The film is meticulous in its detail, providing names and ages of all the people that come across the screen, and since there are many, it is difficult to track who is who (especially since they often wear masks) until characters become more solidified in the second part.  Actually, to call them “characters” is inaccurate on two counts.  One, these were real people.  Two, none of them are fleshed out very much, so other than “pretty girl” or “brutal guy with buzz cut,” they didn’t really register.  Until they start getting killed by each other.  This is where the film got bizarrely interesting.  Is it really all that hard to become a communist?  Certainly not.  China and the Soviet Union were full of them.  There was no daily “self-criticism” like the type seen in the film.  This ideal communist the leaders of the group strive to make their cohorts is irrational and illogical.  When self-criticizing, a man admits he had thoughts of taking over leadership and using the group for his own means.  Mori seethes “You’re a Stalinist!” and has him executed.  That the group is complicit in this is totally unthinkable.  The next character, presumably thinking the same thing as I, that Mori’s bloodlust had been sated, says that he also was guilty of such thoughts.  Mori is beside himself.  He has that man executed as well.  A jealous woman, Toyama, who is part of the leadership, hates a beautiful young lady who was part of the founding members of the organization.  Toyama berates her for wearing makeup and fixing her hair.  Why did she come to the forest to train, Toyama constantly grills her, if she was going to cling to such mannerisms, which are truly out of step with being a true communist?  Toyama and the group eventually force this woman to bury her executed friends and beat herself up.  She dies a few days later.

Wakamatsu stares the lunacy of this group straight on.  How can a group fight global democracy and capitalism when they can’t even seem to be a cogent group themselves?  They are their own worst enemy.  As numbers dwindle and the police close in, one by one, members get arrested.  The final showdown at Asama, valiant as it is misdirected (taking a stand against police who will obviously, with the establishment, spin the incident even more extremely than it already was), was a complete waste.  Shooting cops to make a political point won’t garner much public support, especially when you won’t let a member of the public go free (and no, she wasn’t a hostage to them, but that’s their own ideology spiraling out of control).

No one in this film ends up looking noble or redeeming.   The ending scroll gives the timeline of the group, post-Asama.  I was surprised to find that they were still active into the 2000s, with all the trials, punishments, executions, other terrorist activities, and splintering.  There is a lot of pain, way too much pain that comes from this.  And for what?  Where is communism thriving?  Are you going to call China communist, because that’s naïve.  So much lost; so little gained.  It seems like a true waste and dreary in its finale.

And if you think URA was bleak, it was nowhere near as defeatist as Caterpillar.  Tadashi Kurokawa, a man from a small farming village, is conscripted to join the Japanese Imperial Army for the Sino-Japanese War in 1940.  He is sent to China.   During a battle, as he and his fellow soldiers are raping, maiming and killing Chinese women, he is trapped in a burning house.  He loses both arms, both legs, is badly burned on half of his head and rendered deaf and mute.  Yet, he is still alive.  He is returned to his wife, Shigeko, who is understandably mortified.  Just as he sacrificed for the Emperor, she must now take care of her husband.

Fun, right?  It gets worse.  Tadashi is a brute of a man.  Before being deployed, he would often abuse Shigeko.  She had not given him a child, so he calls her barren and beats her.  Another layer of horror to this story is that the returned Tadashi is hailed as not just a war hero but a war god.  Someone who survived “battle” to still be alive is elevated to almost kami status.  People bow to Tadashi whenever his wife wheels him around town in a wheelbarrow.  In a time where food is scarce, village women will give Shigeko precious eggs for the war god.  No one knows (nor can Tadashi say) just how he became so horribly disfigured, but that the root is monstrous behavior like raping and killing makes celebrations of Tadashi all the more stomach-churning.  What is also disgusting is that Tadashi often asks to see his medals (he is awarded three for his “bravery” and the newspaper article about him) as a means of a pacifier of sorts.  They seem to underscore his heroism, which isn’t even true, but he takes comfort in the recognition.

Furthermore, Tadashi is an immense strain, as you can imagine, on Shigeko, who still has to go out and farm rice and knit fabric at night.  She now has to bathe, feed, and tend to Tadashi’s other … er … digestive functions, very much like taking care of an infant.  But that’s still not enough.  He pulls at her clothes with his teeth and writes with a pencil in his mouth whenever he wants sex.  And he wants sex often.  Shigeko is bound to oblige, not only out of marital duty but duty to the Emperor.  She has to be ultra-care-giver to this man who used to beat and debase her.  She eventually starts to unravel.

I may be biased in my reading of this film, but one thing I found totally grotesque is that Tadashi does not seem to have a conscious.  There are times when we see him flashing back to the women he was raping before the fire consumed the building while his own wife is having sex with him.  He reacts with grunting noises, but it isn’t clear if this is guilt he is feeling.  It’s as if he is in the role of the women (in a move of power, Shigeko initiates sex instead of it being the other way around) and is horrified, not of what he did to others, but that he is feeling what he made others feel.  His constant insatiable needs, which immensely tax his wife, run parallel with how he got himself into his current state of being.  When he commits suicide at the end of the film (sorry, no spoiler alert, but I’m pretty sure even the teeny audience this post may have will not see this film after reading) by rolling out of the house into the small pond outside the front door, it seems more like he is ending his own suffering of having to rely on someone for any and all his needs than overbearing guilt for all the horrors he has visited on others.  He is truly reprehensible, which is what makes this acting performance (as well as the one given by Shigeko’s actress) all the more powerful.  She is so beaten down by expectations and her “duty,” and he is so evil and wretched.

Both films are not all that technical in nature.  URA is not particularly acted well (and is so piecemeal with its large cast that no one really has time to shine).  Its scope and link to a specific piece of history is what make it so captivating.  Caterpillar is well-acted, but the plot brings home the cruelty of humans and the fragility of life.  Wakamatsu is the type of director that has repeat performances by actors, so they are loyal to his vision.  That’s very telling.  It’s a shame we will have no more of that vision in the future.

Yay, Students!

Just a quick post to say my faith in students was yet again bolstered and carried around on shoulders.  My 218 did a great job with tonight's discussion of Closely Watched Trains, Rear Window, The Third Man and their respective source materials.  I'm very high and happy right now.  And some of them have outstanding choices for their second paper:  Flowers for Algernon, The Fall of the House of Usher, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Gulliver's Travels.  Sometimes I can't believe that people let me do this for a living.  It's too much fun.  ^_^

Oscar Reflections (points deducted for late submission)

And so it’s been over two weeks since the Oscars, so why post now?  Maybe it’s because of my students.  They’re so sweet, you know?  They actually asked me questions about what did I think about Seth McFarlane?  So, ok.  What did I think?

First off, regarding Seth McFarlane.  The Oscars are seen as an old fogey show.  So, they’re trying to make it more relevant (or fun) to the kiddies.  They couldn’t do that with James Franco and Anne Hathaway two years ago, so they tried with Seth McFarlane this year.   And you know what?  It worked.  18-35 year olds want to see numbers like “We Saw Your Boobs.”  It was a win for the Academy, even though they shot their actual audience in the foot.  I both appreciate and bemoan Seth McFarlane.  I get him, but hate why.  Was he offensive?  Yes.  Did I get to see him attack Sally Fields and her reciprocate? Yes.  You can’t exploit someone who says yes.

So there is the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Where did everything fall?

The Good:

Yay for Oscars!!!  Because I was all “they got it right!” and impressed with some votes.

THE BIGGEST HIGHLIGHT BY FAR OF THE WHOLE SHOW WAS ANG LEE WINNING FOR BEST DIRECTOR.  I really cannot underscore that enough, and it blew my mind that he actually won.  I know from the get-go that I am way too emotionally involved in Life of Pi, but if you haven’t seen it, try to go see it before it leaves theaters.  You can see Amour at home.  Life of Pi is not the same.  If you don’t get to see it on wide screen, I’m sorry.

The second biggest “YES, WIN!!!” was for Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained.  Believe me, I don’t think Tarantino is the end-all, be-all, and other than Deathproof, this is his worst film.  But without a doubt, Waltz owned that part.  There was no protagonist in this film, because Foxx’s Django was so insipid.  I hope another talented director, like Fincher, gets ahold of this guy, because he is so amazing.

Third, Mychael Danna won for best score.  Yes all around.  What is weird is that I remembered the score when it was important, in dialogue sessions, not in action sequences.  He so got this from the beginning, and I love the fact that he finally got recognition.

Life of Pi winning for cinematography and visual effects.  Maybe I’m biased (in fact, I know I am), but I’m certainly not alone, with this winning the major tech awards.  This wasn’t by chance.  Again, if you can, see it before it leaves theaters.

Lincoln winning for production design.  There was some impressive attention to detail.

The Bad:

Argo for Best Picture, even though that is so obviously false and shows the flaws in the system.  Seriously, FUCK BEN AFFLECK.  I am working from a deficit since I haven’t seen Les Miserables, but of the 8 of the 9, this isn’t even in the top three.  But with all of the politics, whatever.  This was a really decent year for movies, and to see one win that wasn’t all that great win is disheartening.

And Argo winning for best adapted screenplay is sort of odious, too.  Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi didn’t win?

The Ugly:

I couldn’t say this is bad, because it isn’t, but I do think it is wrong, so I’ll put it under ugly.  Without a doubt, Emmanuelle Riva should have won for best actress.  The physicality of what she had to do for the part, and she was 85, was astounding.  I’m not trying to say Jennifer Lawrence was bad in her role, but she is so clearly second place behind Riva here.  I’m not sure if this is age bias or foreign bias, but this was a glaring oversight.

Sorry Steven, but all that overt, garish Oscar campaigning for your movie didn’t pan out.  It’s a bit sickening hearing about all the studio did to try to get votes.  I used to be a big Spielberg fan, but now, he’s diminishing quickly.

I’m still mad that Searching for Sugar Man won.  It’s not a bad movie, but Five Broken Cameras was so amazing.

You’re telling me that Argo was better edited than Zero Dark Thirty?  Wow, Hollywood was really ticked off by the waterboarding.

The Obvious: 

Daniel-Day Lewis for best actor.  DDL gave a great speech about him playing Margaret Thatcher and her playing Lincoln.  Can you imagine those movies?  Great speech by a great actor, though.

Anne Hathaway for best actress, although I still think Helen Hunt probably deserved it more.

Amour for best foreign film.

Les Miserables for best sound mixing.  All those live vocals.  All that noise.  No one else should have probably been in this category.

Adele winning for “Skyfall.”  But I didn’t know beforehand that Scarlett Johansson sang that ice movie’s song.  I didn’t know she sang.  Why hasn’t she been tapped for a musical?

Tarantino winning for best original screenplay.  They had to give Django more than just one award, right?

Surprises:

We had a tie?!?  Do you know how often that happens?  Like almost never.  And both Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall deserved the award, so that was really cool all around.

Brave won instead of Wreck It Ralph.  That is really too bad.  Given the positive message that Ralph was trying to send out, in this world of bullying, I was genuinely surprised that Brave won, since it was by-the-boards pedantic.  This honestly was my biggest surprise.

Can you find religion in a tiger?

No, this isn’t a Criterion post, but it is something that’s been nagging at me since last weekend, and since it is movie-related, I want to mull it over.  The topic is religion in movies.  Last weekend, I watched Flight and The Master, both of which had actors up for best actor at this year’s Academy Awards (Denzel Washington and Joaquin Phoenix) and had actors up for best supporting roles (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams for The Master).  Yesterday, I bought a copy of Life of Pi, my favorite release of last year.  All three films explicitly or implicitly have religion at the heart of their stories.  But I disliked (hate is such a strong word) two and adored one.  They were all competently made with established directors (Robert Zemeckis [Back to the Future series], Paul Thomas Anderson [There Will Be Blood], and Ang Lee [who won best director for Life of Pi, as well he should]).  My problem is that I don’t understand religion very well, and what I do understand of it is a mixture of positive and negative (true of most things, actually, but the good and the bad here seem more polarized).  So this may be an exercise in flaunting my ignorance, but even though work has been taking up most of my life, thinking about these three movies and how religion factors into them keeps resurfacing in my head all week.

The Master is purported to be about Scientology.  I know very little about the religion itself.  It seems to get bad press and looked at rather derisively.  I haven’t seen the South Park episode that rips it apart but have heard synopses.  I’ve listened to the NPR Morning Edition segment on Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear:  Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.  There’s the now infamous interviews with Tom Cruise that have him attesting he’s never ill due to Scientology.  When I was young, my dad read Dianetics and said it was amazing but that he didn’t quite understand it all (which was a mean feat for a book to get my father to admit he didn’t get something – he wasn’t much for admitting personal weaknesses).  I haven’t read Slate’s article on this yet, but definitely will.  I know the Scientologists were pissed off at the movie being made and tried to block its release.  Hoffman’s Hubbard character, Lancaster Dodd, is trying to legitimize his religion to a post-WWII America.  It seems he is sometimes sued after someone gives him money, feeling they’ve been “taken” in what sounds like a confidence scam, and that is telling, because faith has a lot to do with believing what you are being told, whatever that may be.  He also has an anger management issue that has him exploding at people for perfectly reasonable questions and statements.  I’m fairly certain the movie wasn’t trying to explain Scientology, which is probably the best thing about the movie.  It was looking at characters and how they exerted their wills upon each other, especially Quell, Dodd and his wife.  Control, at least for most organized religions, is vital.  Just looking at the dog-and-pony show that has been Pope Benedict stepping down and being replaced by Pope Francis is good enough example of who’s in charge and how information is disseminated.  It also has me revisiting the title.  “Master” is someone in control.  Dodd is attempting to be Quell’s (great choice of name, by the way, as it is something Quell can rarely attain) master.  But Quell is too much the “animal” that Dodd insists that humans stand above.  Quell is pure instinct and impulse.  While Dodd sets himself up to be the thinking man, and that his religion can help those by delving into their past existences, Quell is all about the here and now.  But that’s not completely true either, given his almost suicidal regiment of alcohol (some of which isn’t even drinking alcohol, for crying out loud – hair tonic, missile fuel, paint thinner?!?).  How is this guy alive?  And soused or not, he’ll bang anything in the room, including himself (not to sound prudish, but I can’t recall a film in recently memory with this much … um … self service).  Eat, drink, fuck, pass out, repeat.  Mix well before serving.  Dodd says he likes Quell, so Quell starts an odd allegiance with Dodd.  He’ll fight like a dog for Dodd, but eventually, and I’m not sure how this occurs, but Quell realizes that Dodd is not his master.  This is prefaced by his flight from Dodd with Dodd’s motorcycle in order to see Doris.  When he finds Doris has married and left, instead of going back to Dodd, he goes back to drinking.  It is then Dodd who pursues Quell.  But Dodd’s ultimatum (stay now or go away forever) while singing “Slow Boat to China” is the final push out the door for Quell.  So Quell isn’t the animal after all.  He can make a conscious decision, regardless of the motivations, however base they may be.  The scene between Hoffman and Phoenix made me think of the scene between Day-Lewis and Dano at the end of There Will Be Blood, but where TWBB rang true for me, the scene in Master felt contrived and meant to tie things up too neatly.  Dodd’s whole through line was to help Quell, using the methods of his religion.  But he is unable to do so.  What he offers isn’t good enough for Quell.  Free will – 1, Religion – 0

Flight is also about control and alcoholism.  Whip Whitaker is a raging alcoholic with a side car of cocaine.  But if one was to float the idea that he was not in control of the situation, ‘twould be heresy.  It is made quite clear throughout the movie that his prowess in flying is unmatched.  Imagine how awesome he’d be at his job if he was sober instead of blotto every minute of his life?  Maybe that isn’t enough of a challenge for him?  Whatever the case may be, he pulls an amazing maneuver and saves a great many lives with an insanely high BAC and cocaine pumping through his veins.  He decides after such a life-changing experience to go straight, toss all the vices, and be the hero he will soon be hailed as.  But, that doesn’t last for very long.  What follows degenerates into an after-school special and / or advertisement for AA, complete with the 12 steps, one of the earlier steps being to turn everything over to a higher power, so there are a great many mentions of God and Jesus.  Also, peripheral characters like his co-pilot and wife are extremely religious.  The girl he met in the hospital who ODed just as his plane crashed shacks up with him and decides to go straight, too.  She’s willing to stay with Whitaker if he will clean up his act.  However, Whitaker is incapable of doing so (he hasn’t admitted to himself that he has a problem – step 1), so she leaves him just as he is about to be saved by his guileful lawyer, Don Cheadle.  When blame for drinking is about to be put incorrectly on a stewardess he banged that morning but who died in the crash, Whitaker suddenly has a crisis of conscious and admits his problems to a federal investigation committee, thus landing his butt in jail for a large chunk of time.  This was very by-the-numbers.  What is infinitely better is Washington’s portrayal of an alcoholic in Man on Fire, a far superior movie than this one, which was heavy-handed and didactic.  The only outstanding part was the intensely realistic plane crash sequence.  Unfortunately, I’m deathly afraid of flying, so this movie didn’t do much to instill faith in the airline industry (it was actually concluded that mechanical error in the way of gross negligence on the part of the airplane manufacturer is the culprit and not pilot error).  Free will – 1, Religion – 0, ABC’s Afterschool Specials and Driving Everywhere for Vacation – 1

So we have two films, one pushing religion as a means of recovery and the other using it as a sort of backdrop to watching three characters wrestle with each other.  One is cast as savior while the other is more a solution set to a problem (apply ideology here).  But while there was so much brouhaha about one centering on a religion, that was not the main theme (at least I don’t consider it to be The Master’s main idea – perhaps some do).  But Life of Pi clearly states outright that the story we are about to hear is intended to make us believe in God.  You have two audiences – the believers (in which case, you don’t need a story, as that is already perceived as fact) or nonbelievers (in which case, does a two hour movie have the capacity to do that?).  The protagonist, Pi, is interested in different religions.  He’s born Hindu, discovers Christianity, and accepts Islam.  I like how James Berardinelli puts that he “cherry-picks various aspects of different religions to create his own iteration.”  However, given some of his comments about bookending the story with the Canadian writer talking to the now middle aged Pi cutting all suspense shows he didn’t read the novel.  But the movie is about belief and faith.  In a situation such as Pi is in, you can either believe and have faith that you are going to be rescued or reach land before you die or give up.  For a large part of his ordeal, Pi tells himself that he is staying alive to insure that Richard Parker is alive, because Richard Parker cannot make it out of this situation, him being an animal with instinct instead of wit.  Because Pi had helped tend the animals in his family’s zoo, he feels an obligation to keep Richard Parker alive.  Richard Parker forces Pi not to give up, at least for most of the ordeal.  The tiger is still viciously dangerous, and there may be times that Pi considers leaving Richard Parker to his fate, but he doesn’t.  Pi tries so hard for so long and has to use his cunning to keep them both alive, all the while hoping for the miracle that someone will find them.  For me, there were three heartbreaking instances in the film.  The first is when Pi catches a fish in order to feed Richard Parker.  There is an emergency food and water supply on board the lifeboat, and Pi says that while he can eat biscuits, Richard Parker can’t.  Pi catches a fish and bashes its head to kill it.  Immediately, he starts sobbing and apologizing to the fish for what he has done.  His family is devoutly Hindu and vegetarian, so the killing of one being to keep another alive is mortifying to Pi’s sensibilities, and he truly mourns the fish.  He asks forgiveness of the fish, even though in the dire position he is in, there is no way Richard Parker can be kept alive otherwise; Pi must become a killer in that sense, or at least a carnivore (and he does eventually eat fish because of an accident that wipes away his food supply).  The second is towards the end of the film where the present-day Pi is recounting when the lifeboat finally reached Mexico and Richard Parker goes to the edge of the jungle and disappears, never looking back once at Pi.  Pi is devastated by this.  The two had gone through so much together, and Pi breaks his father’s rule somewhat of not seeing Richard Parker always as a beast that intends to kill him but a friend that he has helped keep alive (for his own sanity’s sake, much like Wilson in Cast Away, as noted by Berardinelli).  This leads Pi to talk about how awful it is that we are not allowed to say goodbye to those we lose forever.  Pi never gets to say goodbye to his family as the ship sinks, he cannot say goodbye to the zebra, orangutan or hyena (he probably wouldn’t want to for the hyena), and with Richard Parker’s surreptitious exit, he never says goodbye to the tiger.  The viewer gets the sense that this pain is something that Pi feels every day of his life, and even though his life is good now (married, kids, house, Canada), every day of his existence he grapples with the gifts that have been given and taken away.  But where there is pain in the taking away, there is love for the giving.  Most people can empathize with this condition of human existence.  To continue past this pain is akin to waiting to be saved, that there has to be meaning in the endurance.  The third, and most wrenching, is when Pi and Richard Parker are near death and no longer have the strength to scrounge food or purify water.  They lay listless, together, on the boat (Pi has been spending most of the shipwreck not on the lifeboat but on a fashioned raft, leaving Richard Parker the lifeboat).  Richard Parker can’t even pick up his head.  Pi crawls over to Richard Parker and lifts his head onto his lap, crying, saying that it is the end, and that he is sorry he couldn’t save the tiger.  It is then that Pi looks skyward and says that he is ready for God to take him.  He does not feel forsaken.  All the horrible things he has gone through, and he still believes.  A criticism sometimes leveled at religion is that the rules put in place by a belief system are for people to try to stay in line so that they can have everlasting pleasure in heaven.  That promise is meant to keep people following the rules.  Otherwise, they would just range uncontrolled without religion guiding them, doing as they pleased (no afterlife = no eternal consequences).  It’s that veil of religion that keeps them in check.  I don’t accept that is Pi.  His giving of his life does not feel like a selfish act to me.  And I don’t believe he is giving up.  He knows he is going to die.  He feels that he has failed.  Death isn’t Pi’s key to paradise, nor his opportunity to make the suffering end.  What it is for him, I am not sure I can say, but it seems antithetical to what I know of previously hearing and seeing how people perceive heaven and unending paradise.

Pi always believed in God.  Does the film make me?  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.  But the beauty of this film, from technical, character and theme-related standpoints, yet again reaffirms the assertion I made towards the end of my Third Man post that humans are capable of such amazing feats.  To borrow from my non-tiger buddy, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.  It does make me believe a little more.