It will
be fascinating to hear the discussions about spirituality following the film Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee and
based on Yann Martel’s novel of the same name. I’d like to avoid commenting on
the film-making (leaving that to the critics), but instead as a pastor, unpack
a few spiritual themes which saturate the story.
Pi, or
Piscine Patel, is the primary character. He is the sole-survivor of a shipwreck
and spends over 200 days in a life boat adrift in the Pacific Ocean. His
primary travel companion is a Bengal tiger. The lifeboat becomes their
“habitat” and an alpha-male must emerge if they are to cohabitate and survive.
Pi
understands habitats and animals because he is the son of a rationalist zoo
keeper, who tells Pi that “religion is darkness.” The first part of Pi’s story
details his life in the zoo and his faithful attempt to follow three religions
at one time. It makes up a third of the novel, but only a small portion of the
film. In the book, Martel uses zoology as a backdrop for theology. Religion is
like a zoo: there are habitats, competition over resources, and people on the
outside looking in on the spectacle. Pi is no mere observer of religion though;
he is a participant and considers himself to be Hindu, Christian, and Muslim
all at once – something that greatly irritates many around him.
Immediately,
we see the metaphorical connections. How do three religions co-exist in the
habitat of Pi’s own soul? Is Pi spiritually adrift? In the book and the movie
Pi is pressed to choose a religion. His father, using reason, tells Pi that
“choosing to follow all religions is the same as choosing no religion.” Pi’s
soul is a zoological habitat, like the life boat in which his three religions,
the zoo animals, and even his own inner animal must be sorted to survive. If
these issues are not settled in boat, he will not survive. If they are not
settled in his soul, then survival has no purpose.
Pi’s
survival with the tiger is, rationally speaking, unbelievable. He admits as
much after rescue. Competing stories emerge about what really happened, but Pi
insists his story is true. Since no alterative stories change the reality of
the sinking ship or the suffering he endured while lost at sea, Pi believes
that asking “what is true” is pointless.
Life of Pi asks the
same thing of spirituality as a mathematician might ask of the symbol p -- what
is p really? At its core, we only know p to be an unresolved
quantity. But more important than what p is, we understand what p does so
we are able to put this unresolved quantity to work for us. The spirituality in
Life of Pi comes to us as an unresolved
quantity. We are asked to focus on the utility of a religious narrative rather getting
tangled in the “irresolvable essence” which Reason might demand of us.
In many
ways, culture is adrift on the sea of Rationalism. Reason attempts to segregate
our habitats by way of reductionist thinking. It’s true, Pi needed reason to
survive, but to give survival meaning he needed something much different. He
needed a guiding narrative. I think most of us know what that feels like.
In this
sense, I believe that Life of Pi will
be remembered as a spiritual masterpiece.
