Even if the young Pi is a movie about "faith", from this perspective, the movie can be roughly divided into three parts. Pi believed in three religions at the same time when he was a teenager. It can be said that he is a pious but not insightful child on religious issues. The drifting after the shipwreck was his reflection and experience of religious beliefs. The life of middle-aged Pi at the beginning and end of the film is the result of his choices.
The beginning of the film does not explain clearly the religious beliefs of the young Pi, only mentioning that he has believed in all the world's important religions, and seems to believe in the concept of "animity", which can be seen from his views on the world. Tiger's attitude is different from everyone else's. I don't know how the original book explained the protagonist's childhood in India and his spiritual world during that time. According to my thoughts on religion, I think that Pi at that time had yearning and awe for religion, but there should also be various confusions. For example, "What is God like?" "Does God really exist?" If a believer has never questioned such issues, he may not be considered a devout believer. Piety does not mean blind obedience. The reason why I think young Pi is confused about these kinds of issues is that he thinks he can follow three religions at the same time. In the eyes of others, this kind of behavior is ridiculous, even not serious, Pi's father also reminded him, but Pi is not embarrassed by his behavior, which shows that he thinks he should Finally my own judgment.
Since it is said that the movie is related to faith, the shipwreck and drifting are Pi's in-depth thinking process on the whole problem of faith. Before the shipwreck, Pi was on the deck feeling the violent storm, which can be understood as his reverence for nature (the god who controls nature). At that time, in his eyes, "God" was a powerful, even omnipotent ), TA affects human life by taking control of nature. It is because of this primary belief that young Pi later drifted on the sea and felt desperate, so he would roar like this: I surrender, what do you want? profound puzzlement. This kind of puzzlement, although ordinary people may not necessarily have experienced desperate situations such as drifting at sea, it will also arise from time to time: If "God" really exists, then why did they create this disaster. This disaster is a shipwreck for Pi, but for others it may be a school shooting, bank robbery, traffic accident, poverty, unemployment... This interpretation may not seem very clever, but I really think that this film has this depth. . I don't like to be overly eloquent, although the tendency to write reviews is unavoidable.
What Pi, who is alone on the boat, desires to know the most can be described as "God's Will", "God's Logic", "God's Reason", but I prefer to describe it as "The Order of the Universe". In religion, the order of the universe is often the embodiment of God's will, and the way people perceive God/or God is mostly to interpret various phenomena in nature and in the human race. Precisely because God is silent, and man's ability to interpret is extremely limited, the "order of the universe" has always been a huge and silent mystery that cannot be fully penetrated by man. And because human beings cannot penetrate the order of the universe, human thinking has never been able to compare with the will of God. So God is a kind of existence beyond the understanding of human intelligence.
Now let’s talk about those two stories. My main dissatisfaction with this film is that choosing which of the two stories to believe in can solve the problems raised in the paragraph just now? When I was a freshman, I fell into the quagmire of these questions, knowing that I couldn't come up with any new theories (because human beings have never stopped thinking about these questions since ancient times), but I still let myself suffer. tangled for a long time. When it comes to beliefs, I think it's a better state to be hesitant than not to be hesitant. So I hesitated for a while, and until now these hesitations are still peeking at a corner of my mind, and maybe one day they will reappear.
Two stories about Pi, if the two are corresponded, the zebra with the broken leg is the gentle Chinese seaman, the fierce (dog? wolf? Forgot....) is the brutal cook, and the female orangutan is the mother , it is not difficult to match the three, but there is a tiger in the first story, and there is nothing corresponding to a tiger in the second story. So I tend to think that the tiger and the boy Pi in the first story together are equivalent to the boy Pi in the second story. This is not a brilliant opinion. Many people have mentioned that the tiger is the externalized image of the animal part of the young Pi's personality. Of course, this interpretation is not unique, but no matter how you look at it, it is reliable. Following this line of thinking, we will come to a binary interpretation of human beings such as the contrast between goodness, rationality and evil, and animal nature in human nature, and fix the moral of the story at the level of human nature.
But as I said at the beginning, this movie is about faith, and it is not enough to stay on the level of human nature. In the first story, the young Pi gradually found a balance of living at sea in the process of getting along with the tiger. The relationship between him and the tiger was interdependent. The tiger lived on the water and food he gave, and in turn He was also cautious, calm, and rational because he was afraid of the tiger's animal nature, and finally survived. The "balance" gradually formed between him and the tiger is the embodiment of "the order of the universe". Some people may feel that this sublimation is too violent. That's right, it does feel a little bit of a step up to the sky. But the balance of juvenile Pi and tiger doesn't seem too steep if you look at it against the larger ocean backdrop. Teenage Pi was caught in a deadly storm at sea, but he also sat on his wooden raft like an Arabian prince and enjoyed the peace when the weather was calm. Pi not only appreciates the beauty and magic of sea creatures at night, but at the same time desperately preys on sea fish... If all of these are taken into account, then the word "order of the universe" may not seem so abrupt. Centered on the fragile balance formed by himself and the tiger (the ferocious, brutal, crazy in human nature), the young Pi gradually felt the hidden order behind everything, although he still could not fully describe what he felt in words. He came out, but spiritually he had a deeper understanding of the "mind of God".
As for Pi in the end saying that he misses the tiger a little, I don't think he misses the evil and madness in human nature, but (maybe) he thinks that God made the tiger jump into the boat, or that God made human nature exist and we consciously not. Beautiful things are for us to feel and appreciate "God's thoughts" in the process of getting along with them and checking and balancing each other.
The above is almost my interpretation of the religious beliefs in Juvenile Pi. Young Pi does touch on some of the core issues of religious beliefs, which may be the reason why many viewers think this is a profound film. But the film involves the depth of religious belief, and even little fingers can't be drowned. If the way to solve the problem is just "do you believe the former or the latter", then people have been trapped by these problems for thousands of years, this IQ is really worrying!
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