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站前 英文 | 好萊塢影評焦點 [少年Pi的奇幻漂流]

The film from Fox holds an 87 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and is tracking to debut to a five-day Thanksgiving weekend, with returns in the $30 million range.

FILM REVIEW: Life of Pi
Below are what some of the top critics had to say about the film.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy opined though the film would have been “inconceivable” a decade ago due to technological limitations, it succeedes thanks to new visual effects possibilities and Lee's directing.

“Ang Lee, that great chameleon among contemporary directors, achieves an admirable sense of wonder in this tall tale about a shipwrecked teenager stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, a yarn that has been adapted from the compellingly peculiar best-seller with its beguiling preposterousness intact,” McCarthy wrote.

“The leap of faith required for Lee to believe this could be put up onscreen in a credible way was necessarily considerable. His fingerprints are at once invisible and yet all over the film in the tact, intelligence, curiosity and confidence that characterizes the undertaking.

In his four-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert called the film a “miraculous achievement of storytelling” and deamed it one of the year’s best films. Ebert also found himself surprised by how much he liked the film’s use of 3D.

“I've never seen the medium better employed, not even in Avatar, and although I continue to have doubts about it in general, Lee never uses it for surprises or sensations, but only to deepen the film's sense of places and events.”

Ebert added: “The movie quietly combines various religious traditions to enfold its story in the wonder of life. How remarkable that these two mammals, and the fish beneath them and birds above them, are all here.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern praised the mostly CG creation that was the tiger called Richard Parker.
STORY: Why Fox Gambled $100 Million on Ang Lee: The Making of 'Life of Pi'

“In one sense this fully believable CGI creation is a wonder of technology, and a tribute to the current state of the animation arts. Yet the greater significance of Richard Parker is that he's fully integrated into the film, and a tribute to the director's virtuosity,” Morgenstern wrote. “Here, working from an intricately literary source, he [the director] has visualized, convincingly and completely, a magical world in which a dying man clings to his planet, and a tiger burns bright, night and day.”

New York Times critic A.O. Scott also praised the tiger as a powerful force in the story.
“Unlike just about every other cartoon animal you can think of, Richard Parker, despite his name, is never anthropomorphized, never pulled out of his essentially predatory nature,” he wrote. The relationship that develops between him and Pi is therefore a complicated one, involving fear and competition as well as (on Pi’s end, at least) compassion and love.”

But Scott questioned what seemed to be the film’s thesis—that the unverse is a generally benevolent place, a conclusion which Scott wrote ”can feel more like a result of delusion or deceit.”

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“The movie invites you to believe in all kinds of marvelous things, but it also may cause you to doubt what you see with your own eyes — or even to wonder if, in the end, you have seen anything at all,” Scott wrote.

Slate’s Dana Stevens was among the few critics not enamored with the film, writing in her review's opening sentence the film “might be a good movie to see stoned—or maybe it’s just one that makes you feel as though you already are stoned.”

“The long middle section—the movie’s strongest stretch— plays like a hallucinogenic mashup of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, the reality show I Shouldn’t Be Alive, and a soothing promotional video that might play on a loop in the waiting room of a very fancy Ayurvedic spa,” she wrote.
Stevens praised the film’s crisp visuals but found its final 20 minutes to be dull, a section in which the “movie’s energy peters out in a series of book-club conversations about divine will, the power of storytelling, and the resilience of the human spirit.”

李安一生挑了許多不同故事，拍成電影。像一名沉默的老虎，當他蟄伏時，身邊的朋友一度以為他只是許多流連於紐約做著電影夢的男人。直至《臥虎藏龍》，沉睡的老虎醒了，他把一生的挫折、溫情、旁觀、澎湃、異鄉、懷舊、疏離、眷戀……全揮灑於他的電影中。於是，一個不可忽視的名字「李安」，終躍上全球。

關於「李安」的名字與他的外表，給人太多的錯覺。他太不出色了，他太安於「忠實」了，他是一個「好人」，一個「儒生」；這些特質組合起來，如何成為一名傑出藝術家呢？但李安的出現打破「達利式」藝術家標榜的「狂妄」與「自戀」，他蹲地夠低，所以他的眼睛看世界、看人生、看宗教都夠廣夠透徹。

我未曾錯過李安任何一部片子，自從《斷背山》後，我已是他的影迷。他對人性的徹悟，使任何故事在他手中，無論題材為東方的、西方的、古典的、現代的、科幻的、冒險的、性別的、親情的……最終故事只是一個殼，李安會透過老僧才擁有的靈魂，讓你走入主角的生命，與他或她一同呼吸。瞬間，觀眾丟開了世間的成見、框架、枷鎖……，我們愛起了每個主角，跟著他歷經其實我們未曾經歷的旅程。

6年前《斷背山》使李安真正登上了導演的高峰。接著他從懷俄明的山脊回到上海灘拍了《色，戒》，4年後他又交出了印度小男孩《Life of PI》的3Ｄ電影。李安沒有令我失望！奇幻3Ｄ技術中，我看到的是古老的智慧，未曾被污染的海洋，男孩純真的心靈使他同時信仰印度教、天主教、回教。他熱愛每一個宗教啟發他的良善與真誠，因此電影裡李安變更了原著小說的情節，長在動物園家庭的小男孩一度想伸手和最殘暴也最迷眩的老虎作朋友。

緩慢手法鋪陳影片
小男孩PI的「多神教」受盡家人嘲諷，再祈禱下去「你的羊肉晚點就沒了」；小男孩想與老虎當朋友的心願，也在一場父親以一隻山羊被老虎活吞的血淋淋教訓中終結。

然而上天還是在海難中，讓PI失去他深愛的父親、母親、哥哥……，最終與老虎「理查」相守漂流大洋。什麼都沒有了，只剩老虎。而老虎隨時想吞噬他，但因恐懼使他忘卻悲傷；他沒有絕望的權利。 

李安在電影中以好萊塢少見的緩慢手法鋪陳那段好似無法停止的漂流，觀眾時而覺得這場漂流將無邊無際，時而享受危險旅程中大海之美；然後又在老虎吞噬的驚恐中，錯亂地等待下一個答案。 

世界上大概只有李安，會在這樣的故事結尾加入如此的旁白，「當你陷入危險時，你反而強壯；當你終於安全時，你反而虛弱」。
小男孩終於漂過太平洋，在墨西哥海灘上被救起。大海中與他最終成為朋友的老虎，一步躍上了沙灘。男孩期待老虎理查至少回頭看他一眼，他知道這將是永恆的告別，他期望「理查」至少記得他。男孩沒有恨，只有感激，因為牠激發了男孩的求生意志；可是「理查」最終頭也不回地離開了他。 

於是當人們抱起小男孩時，他放聲大哭，哭的不是他終於獲救了，也不是那片海洋吞噬了他所有家人；而是老虎毫不留戀地躍入叢林。那一刻，他知道，這世間有些事永遠是殘酷的；有些事，永遠改變不了。他心碎了，也長大了。 

專訪李安時，我問他：「你自己是不是就是那個男孩PI？」他回答很乾脆：「是。」

資料參考：
蘋果日報
http://bit.ly/SxXbSz
好萊塢影評
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/life-pi-movie-review-roundup-393866
聯合報
http://blog.udn.com/georgepchuang/7070253

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