Apple cider vinegar Is Pilates for you? 'Ambient gaslighting' 'Main character energy'
MOVIES
Los Angeles

'Life of Pi' took Ang Lee on an epic journey of his own

Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY
"Sometimes we go through things in life that's equivalent to that journey," director Ang Lee says. "You wish the test could be as simple as drifting across the ocean with a Bengal tiger."
  • The director spent four years creating the 3-D world from Yann Martel's prize-winning novel
  • The main stars are a teenage first-time Indian actor and a computer-generated tiger
  • The movie is getting Oscar buzz and praise from James Cameron for its 3-D achievement

LOS ANGELES — In Life of Pi, young Pi Patel finds himself marooned at sea on a tiny lifeboat, surviving a 227-day ordeal with a hungry Bengal tiger.

There were times, director Ang Lee says with a wry smile, that he envied his fictional film subject.

"Sometimes we go through things in life that are equivalent to that journey," Lee says. "You wish the test could be as simple as drifting across the ocean with a Bengal tiger. Sometimes things feel harder. Such as making this movie."

Life of Pi has been a four-year epic journey for Lee, 58, who struggled to bring Yann Martel's 2002 Man Booker Prize-winning novel to the screen. The story of a young Indian boy exploring his spirituality before heading out on an ill-fated journey with his family and a menagerie of animals across the Pacific was long considered unfilmable — especially because a storm leaves Pi alone on the raft with the tiger for much of the story.

But the Oscar-winning Lee (best director for 2005's Brokeback Mountain and best foreign film for 2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) persevered just as surely as Pi eventually finds land.

Life of Pi opens Wednesday to a growing chorus of critical praise and is widely touted as a best-picture contender. It has been heralded for its 3-D cinematic achievement — notably by Avatar director James Cameron, who calls it "a magical vision ... a masterpiece" and Lee "a master filmmaker."

It comes at a cost to Lee.

"I feel exactly how Pi was when he finally reached the Mexican shore," Lee says, explaining the feeling of completing the project. "I literally felt like I was adrift with the tiger."

Sitting in a sparsely decorated production office on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles, which has been his editing home for the final six months of the project, Lee has the look of a survivor. Although he appears calm, his hair is ruffled, his eyes express weariness, and he gives a nervous laugh as he talks about the "tiger" that he, too, had to control to complete the project.

His tiger represents much more than the challenging film-making obstacles. Life of Pi, with its budget estimated at $100 to $120 million, is far more expensive than similar literary properties turned to films. 20th Century Fox, which produced the film, is gambling that a broad audience will be pulled in to see what is being marketed as a 3-D adventure story.

"It's a highly anticipated movie, an expensive movie," Lee says. The tiger "is your opponent, which is audience expectations. My biggest anxiety is: Can it play as a popular film?

"There's also the inner tiger," he adds. "That's the beast that wants to make the movie, that wants to explore."

This inner tiger is the force that set Lee on the challenge four years ago. "Unlike Pi, I chose to take this journey. Pi did not have a choice," Lee says. "But it sort of chose me."

Lee initially declined directing the project despite being an admirer of the "mind-boggling" novel.

"For what it was, it was way too expensive to make, if it was filmable at all. Everything put together, it was like the number pi, irrational. If you know the business, there were a lot of no-nos."

The project moved through potential directors, including M. Night Shyamalan, before coming back to Lee again in 2008. This time he made the leap. It helped that he found his Pi after a search of 3,000 wannabe actors in India. Although Suraj Sharma, now 19, had no acting experience and had attended the audition just to keep his actor brother company, Lee saw true promise.

"Suraj has the most compelling face," Lee says. "When I met him for the first time, I began to see the movie. When you see him you see Pi. (He) is such rare talent. Even though he has never acted before. It's like little Buddha. His previous lives have been doing this all along. I just reminded him."

Lee also insisted that the movie be shot in 3-D, his first effort in the medium, to reach a broader audience. That was a harder discussion before Cameron's Avatar "legitimized" 3-D in 2009, Lee says. Despite the cost, Fox went along with it.

"I said 2-D, even though it's cheaper, it is maybe a bad idea. 3-D is a risk. But there was an upside to it," Lee says. "I imagined the audience would give it more of a chance."

The filmmaker also was bolstered by advances in computer graphic technology to capture the film's animals, especially the Bengal tiger, called Richard Parker. Even with the technology, it was painstaking work.

"It's still handcraft. There's no button to push. There's not a program to make an animal look real," Lee says. "Every frame is a labor of love. Some shots took three months, some six months."

To help the process, the filmmakers brought four tigers and one hyena to the set to study and shot weeks' worth of reference shots for their computer images. A 7-year-old 450-pound Bengal tiger named King became the model for Richard Parker.

Visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhoffer says the tiger, which took a year to create, was so real that the filmmakers had to prove to the government of India that it was computer-generated.

"We had to show the tiger getting unhealthy was all our doing," Westenhoffer says. "They wanted to know no tiger was harmed. It was actually a compliment."

For the water shots, Lee oversaw the production of the largest self-generating wave tank ever designed and built for a movie. Built on the site of a former airport in his hometown of Taichung, Taiwan, the tank had a capacity of 1.7 million gallons.

For Lee it was vital to have scenes shot in which he could control the elements and the waves. But he also wanted to show the ocean scenes without the water tank bounce-back he noticed in other ocean movies, which he calls the "bathtub effect."

"We're imitating the open ocean, and the whole second act is on the water," Lee says. "Obviously we're not going out to the ocean."

Even with the controlled environment, the shots were challenging. During a sequence called "Storm of God," Lee had one of the most frustrating days of his movie career as the 3-D equipment became fogged up late into a night shoot.

"It was the first time in my career nothing got done in 12 hours," Lee says.

Pi cries out to God in the scene, and Lee jokes that he was going through the same feelings.

'You look up at God and say: 'How does this work? Show me!' Give me a sign or something," Lee says, looking to the ceiling of his office. " 'I did this. I did that. What more do you want?' I think everyone has those moments in their lives."

Sharma says he could see that his director, who became his spiritual mentor during a ceremony on the set, was inspirational in his outward calm on the set.

"Things got intense," Sharma says. "You could see the pressure. You could see the intensity. And he didn't break. That's what kept us going. How did he not break?"

One of the crowning moments is the sinking of the cargo ship that starts Pi's journey. All told, the storm-filled scene took nearly 77 days to shoot.

"It's hard to convince the studio when they haven't seen it. Why do we spend so much time sinking the boat? But that's a pure cinematic experience," Lee says. "That's what 3-D should be doing.

"I am very proud of it," he says with a satisfied smile.

Irrfan Khan, who plays the older Pi, says Lee succeeded in bringing the complex story to the screen.

"Ang does this film in a way the common man can identify with it, but still he leaves all the complication of the story intact," Khan says. "He doesn't compromise on that at all, and that's very exciting."

The director says he crashed right after he finished his final color corrections in post-production.

"I started to feel this aching in my bones. I didn't feel like celebrating, but I should have. Give everyone a big hug and smile. But nothing."

He recovered from the brief illness and now looks forward to bringing his project to a worldwide audience. Lee is plain-spoken about the movie's award possibilities.

"The movie looks pretty great; I am very proud of it. There's no doubt there's a labor of love," he says. "People put their heart and soul into it. I'd like to see some of us get noticed. That would great."

Lee has two months of press ahead of him to promote the film and has not decided on a next project. But don't count on him resting too long.

"I'm not really good at time off," he says. I'm a fortunate filmmaker. People send me stuff. Whatever gets me hooked, makes me feel like doing a movie, I just go do it. That will be the next one or two years of my life.

"Or, if it's like this case, it will be my next four years."

Featured Weekly Ad