Life of Pi: Book vs. Movie
Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012) adapts Yann Martel’s 2001 novel. After a shipwreck, a teenager must find a way to survive at sea with a Bengal tiger aboard his lifeboat.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
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Pi's two accounts survive, but the telling changes
The book and movie both offer an account with animals and another without them. The movie brings the final choice into the older Pi's conversation with the writer.
Magee said the filmmakers considered using the hospital interviews as their main frame. They chose the older Pi and the writer because passing the story to someone else mattered to them. He wanted the retelling to be reflective, rather than only an account given during the immediate crisis.
How it was adapted
Pi's long childhood becomes a much shorter opening
The movie adapts Martel's novel through its ending, but greatly reduces the time spent before the voyage. The book gives much more space to Pi's childhood, his religious questions and his understanding of the world.
Screenwriter David Magee described the task as turning roughly a hundred pages into about twenty-five minutes. He wanted to keep Pi's curiosity and the humor of those passages without making the opening a lecture about religion.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Yann Martel
- Year
- 2001
- Pages
- 336Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 12 hr 53 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Vikas Adam
Growing up in his father’s zoo in Pondicherry, Pi Patel pursues an interest in several religions alongside lessons in animal behavior. When his family’s voyage to Canada ends in a shipwreck, he finds himself sharing a lifeboat with animals from the zoo, including a Bengal tiger. His efforts to establish a precarious routine at sea test both his practical knowledge and his faith.
- Director
- Ang Lee
- Writer
- David Magee
- Year
- 2012
- Runtime
- 2 hr 7 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Rafe Spall
- Genre
- Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, magic realist, survival
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
From his home in Canada, Pi Patel tells a visiting writer about the voyage that left him stranded in the Pacific as a teenager. A tiger named Richard Parker occupies the lifeboat, forcing Pi onto a makeshift raft while he works out how to secure food, water, and space for himself. Keeping the animal alive becomes part of his own struggle to endure the crossing.
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