I think you came away with an entirely unintended view (by the filmmakers, and probably, although I’m not 100% sure, the novelist); if you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi it doesn’t seem like anyone quoted in it has any anti-religious point of view at all.
Which is not to say that you can’t extract a strong anti-religion message from the actual story! Doing so was in fact my first cynical joke (and a game we here have often played):
Life of Pi is a extended demonstration of the wondrous value of lying to yourself about the awful things you do to survive and how other people will abet even murder if they’re told a good story, and how this is all a metaphor for religion. Or something.
But… the protagonist pretty much says “V’ir frra naq qbar fbzr ubeevsvp guvatf, gura vairagrq n cerggl fgbel gb oybpx gurz bhg. Naq fb vg tbrf jvgu tbq: jura crbcyr oryvrir va tbq, gurl’er qbvat gur fnzr.” How can anyone consider this a pro-religion message? I guess I saw a really good anti-religion message while everyone else, including Obama, saw a pro-religion one.
How can anyone consider this a pro-religion message?
The pretty story could just be the narration itself, truthful or not; the true horror and suffering is not going to come through his narration, even if he tries to describe his thirst or boredom or fear of the tiger. As a counter-point, consider what we’re told repeatedly by the narrator of the frame story and IIRC Pi as well: that it’s a story which will make one believe in God. A story about cannibalism & murder with a cover-up lie to preserve one’s sanity isn’t really that sort of story.
I was under the impression that the frame story was supposed to convince you to believe in God, by presenting an argument that believing in God might be a lie but it’s useful to keep your sanity and the facts don’t matter anyway. The key phrase of the film, “and so it goes with God”, uttered in a depressing tone, refers to that. That’s the brilliance I saw in the film: in the space of one minute, it presents this rational case for the usefulness of belief, then turns around and shows you how hollow it is. No?
(Sorry if I’m kind of over-explaining the point here, I’m a bit sleepy)
Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. And as I said, I like this interpretation better since I think the case for believing in God because of the story is so weak that it forms a sort of reductio so that you believe the opposite (‘this is his best argument for believing in God—it’s only a slightly useful Noble Lie?’) But I don’t think this is how the author takes the ending, or what he believes. If you look at one of Wikipedia’s refs, this interview http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec02/martel_11-11.html—it comes off as your standard mushy-headed NOMA ecumenicalism. He talks about his own directionless life, admiring all religions, getting the idea in India, that sort of thing, and caps it off:
And it’s funny, I realize people who reject religion or are very cynical about it usually know just enough about a religion to be able to dismiss it. So they only know the exaggerations, the excesses of that religion. In a sense, what a lot of us do with Islam, we only notice the bad things about it. We don’t realize the good things that are happening with it. So now that I’ve suspended my cynicism, now that I’ve put aside my criticism let’s say of organized religion and gone to the texts, yes, I do see more of where they’re coming from.
To me, this makes the author sound like he’s… what’s that sarcastic phrase, ‘spiritual but not theistic’? If I had to guess, I think he put in the twist as a trap for the cynical and atheistic which lets them (us) think they’ve solved the story and reduced it down to dreary rationality (unweaved the rainbow) but which serves as an opportunity for the spiritual to affirm that they believe the tiger story and that believing is important even if not all the facts seem to fit (belief in belief).
I think you came away with an entirely unintended view (by the filmmakers, and probably, although I’m not 100% sure, the novelist); if you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi it doesn’t seem like anyone quoted in it has any anti-religious point of view at all.
Which is not to say that you can’t extract a strong anti-religion message from the actual story! Doing so was in fact my first cynical joke (and a game we here have often played):
Wow, that’s pretty surprising. Thanks.
But… the protagonist pretty much says “V’ir frra naq qbar fbzr ubeevsvp guvatf, gura vairagrq n cerggl fgbel gb oybpx gurz bhg. Naq fb vg tbrf jvgu tbq: jura crbcyr oryvrir va tbq, gurl’er qbvat gur fnzr.” How can anyone consider this a pro-religion message? I guess I saw a really good anti-religion message while everyone else, including Obama, saw a pro-religion one.
The pretty story could just be the narration itself, truthful or not; the true horror and suffering is not going to come through his narration, even if he tries to describe his thirst or boredom or fear of the tiger. As a counter-point, consider what we’re told repeatedly by the narrator of the frame story and IIRC Pi as well: that it’s a story which will make one believe in God. A story about cannibalism & murder with a cover-up lie to preserve one’s sanity isn’t really that sort of story.
I was under the impression that the frame story was supposed to convince you to believe in God, by presenting an argument that believing in God might be a lie but it’s useful to keep your sanity and the facts don’t matter anyway. The key phrase of the film, “and so it goes with God”, uttered in a depressing tone, refers to that. That’s the brilliance I saw in the film: in the space of one minute, it presents this rational case for the usefulness of belief, then turns around and shows you how hollow it is. No?
(Sorry if I’m kind of over-explaining the point here, I’m a bit sleepy)
Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. And as I said, I like this interpretation better since I think the case for believing in God because of the story is so weak that it forms a sort of reductio so that you believe the opposite (‘this is his best argument for believing in God—it’s only a slightly useful Noble Lie?’) But I don’t think this is how the author takes the ending, or what he believes. If you look at one of Wikipedia’s refs, this interview http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec02/martel_11-11.html—it comes off as your standard mushy-headed NOMA ecumenicalism. He talks about his own directionless life, admiring all religions, getting the idea in India, that sort of thing, and caps it off:
To me, this makes the author sound like he’s… what’s that sarcastic phrase, ‘spiritual but not theistic’? If I had to guess, I think he put in the twist as a trap for the cynical and atheistic which lets them (us) think they’ve solved the story and reduced it down to dreary rationality (unweaved the rainbow) but which serves as an opportunity for the spiritual to affirm that they believe the tiger story and that believing is important even if not all the facts seem to fit (belief in belief).
I haven’t seen the movie but what you wrote sounds like a big spoiler. If so please use rot13.