[Nick Brandt photo, Iris Gallery, Boston; 1/14/13]
This weekend we went to see the movie Life of Pi in 3D, much of which was utterly beautiful. I never read the book, so I didn't have any expectations - other than knowing that the movie was directed in 3D by Ang Lee. I knew we'd be in good hands. 3D technology can be a gimmick, but a cinematic master can use it to create visual poetry, and that it was. If you've somehow missed both the novel and the movie, the center of the story is a Hindu boy named Pi who is shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean on a life raft with a Bengal tiger. This is not the tiger out of Disney's Jungle Book, but a brutal predator that the boy has to learn to live with (and vice versa). But the ocean is deep and layered (3D) with swimming creatures and the sky above full of stars, the air itself sometimes full as well with flying fish, dolphins, or a breaching whale. The boy is resourceful and learns as he goes. He has faith and his adventure is epic.
Also this weekend, I finished reading The Dog Stars, a lyrically written novel of life after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of the human population. Life has turned brutal and as lonely as Pi's for the protagonist, Hig, who has lost his wife and just about everything except his dog. He holes up near an airstrip outside of Denver, where he has a small plane he occasionally flies around in. He has one rather unsavory firearms-happy neighbor, Bangley, with whom he shares an uneasy relationship. It occurs to me now that Bangley is not entirely unlike Pi's tiger, perhaps only slightly less dangerous. Anyway, besides escaping periodically in his plane, Hig hikes out into what's left of the wilderness, ravaged by global warming, to hunt, fish, and commune with nature. The descriptions of this territory are some of the most poetic in the novel, filled with fish and stars. Hig is also resourceful, and he has heart though he has left none of Pi's faith. The tiniest of threads of hope leads him out onto his own adventure that makes up the second half of this lovely novel.
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