A Comparitive Analysis on the Film Adaptation of Life of Pi

When novels are adapted for the cinema, directors and writers frequently make changes in the plot, setting, characterization and themes of the novel. Sometimes the changes are made in adaptations due to the distinctive interpretations of the novel, which involve personal views of the book and choices of elements to retain, reproduce, change or leave out. On the contrary, a film is not just an illustrated version of the novel; it is a totally different medium. When adapting the novel, the director has to leave out a number of things for the simple reason of time difference. Furthermore, other structures and techniques must be added to the film to enhance the beauty and impressions of it. Like a

Because of Pi’s religion, he does not judge other people. Socially, he is very curious about all other religions and those who aren’t religious at all. The character known as Mamaji is Pi’s uncle and he is an atheist but Pi does not judge or even mind that his defies religion and the presence of god. This is just a respect for emotional/social boundaries. Another example of social boundaries in the book is when the hyena kills the zebra but waits for Richard Parker the tiger to eat first.

Filmmaking and cinematography are art forms completely open to interpretation in a myriad ways: frame composition, lighting, casting, camera angles, shot length, etc. The truly talented filmmaker employs every tool available to make a film communicate to the viewer on different levels, including social and emotional. When a filmmaker chooses to undertake an adaptation of a literary classic, the choices become somewhat more limited. In order to be true to the integrity of the piece of literature, the artistic team making the adaptation must be careful to communicate what is believed was intended by the writer. When the literature being adapted is

Contradicting this notion is Thomas Leitch’s eighth fallacy of Contemporary Adaptation Theory (2003), where the imagination of the reader or viewer is summoned through different storytelling devices, at times when they overlap one another, by either the film or the book. Differences between the use of storytelling devices are more easily determined between projects utilising the same medium, be it film to film, or book to book. And as The BFG, both the film and the book, are of the fantasy genre, the ‘film team’ may have preferred the film as it was easier for them to get and to

In most cases, an adaptation is seen as an all-encompassing transposition of an already existing product. This transposition can be a shift of medium or genre or for that matter the context; telling the same story but from a different point of view. Any and all of these can change the way a story is interpreted. We can also understand transposition as a shift from real to fictional. Another way of looking at adaptation is to see it as a process of re-creation and re-interpretation. But this relies heavily on one's perspective. The film adaptations of African myths and legends are seen as a way of preserving a rich heritage in an audio-visual method. (Cham).

The way Pi acts throughout his journey suggests that having faith is one of the most important practises to learn as it can give an individual hope. Pi has a strong connection to all his practising faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Society is set to have many unspoken rules that we must abide by to

The PBS article on film adaption discusses the challenges of adapting a novel into film and the changes film makers may need to make. There are many differences between the two due to their prepositional setups. This can cause key factors of a novel to be lost once transferred into a film. This includes a narrator, personal attachments with the characters, engaging your imagination and possibly even scenes due to the time limitation a film has(PBS). However, when a director takes on this challenge they’re able to alter the novel and fix any faults they see. They also must make many attempts to successfully convey the protagonist’s emotions through other tools with actions or visual aids. This results in the director's

ʽThe book was betterʼ is pointed out by Robert Stam as one of the most common made statements comparing a novel and itʼs cinematic adaptation. Therefore, a clear focus on the loss rather than a gain can be detected.1 The notion of fidelity between a novel and the adaptation seems to generally have a high importance to the masses; one can be disappointed if the adaptation does not meet personal expectations such as narrative, thematic and aesthetic features.2 Fidelity between a literary and a cinematic work might, according to Stam, be impossible due to automatic differences in change of medium.3

While most of us love watching films, those of us who have read the book in which a film was developed from, will most likely feel uneasy when the film does not match exactly what we read. In most cases, we feel disappointed to not see our own interpretation of the book on the screen. A film made from a book or inspired by a book is called adaptation. Many people who have read Cornell Woolrich's short story "It Had to Be Murder" and then watched Alfred Hitchcock’s film, “Rear Window,” were disappointed that the adaptation did not reflect exactly the

When books are adapted into movies certain aspects of the book are changed to aid in translating the story from page to screen. Details are changed to appeal to the audience.

Storytelling has always been popular amongst people throughout the world even before writing existed. Before writing, people would pass down stories orally or even through paintings drawn on cave walls. Today, people still tell different kinds of stories, but in entirely new ways such as novels and movies. In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel and in the movie Big Fish directed by Tim Burton, the truth is found not in the reality of day to day life but in the fantastical stories that the characters tell in order to make meaning of their lives and to answer unanswerable questions.

In Life of Pi, Yann Martel weaving a wondrous tale of God, a shipwreck, and the nature of storytelling, but the film version, marvelously made by Ang Lee, contains several significant inconsistencies with the book. Although the general structure of the story is the same in both versions, the limitations of film-making and the realities of what makes a film entertaining create the few changes between the two versions.

    Adaptations are throughout the world, whether it is a film or story it gives us more creations to be involved in. Some new creations are better than others, while the original may be the most outstanding version and never be dented by any adaptation. This truly depends on your own opinions and views, however, with adaptations viewers are forced to see the literature in a different way, sometimes ever imagined.

Contrary to the general public’s belief, adaptations are much more than a mere visual illustration of a novel. When adapting a literary work, the screenwriter’s integrity towards the author is highly crucial to prevent a disagreement, which could lead to a copyright infringement. This will also ensure the audience’s approval because the screenplay’s plot is less likely to deviate from the author 's fundamental storyline in the original work. Furthermore, adapting a literary work into a screenplay consist of a very rigorous filtering process that is often challenging for the screenwriter. The screenwriter often faces dilemmas in which the decisions to omit or heighten certain aspects could either ensure the movie’s success or its failure.

Readers expect the film to be faithful to its source material in ways that a filmic adaptation simply cannot be faithful to a literary work, because “[t]he demand for fidelity ignores the actual process of making films, the important differences in modes of production” (16). Stam and Raengo go even further by claiming “[a] filmic adaptation is automatically different and original due to the change of medium” (17). Another reason why adaptations are infidel to their source material, apart from media characteristics, is money: “While a novelist’s choices are relatively unconstrained by considerations of budget […] films are from the outset immersed in technology and commerce” (16). A novelist only has to take his or her time to sit down and write a literary work and find a publishing house to publish it, and therefore does not have to spend large amounts of money. Yet, for a film to be made, numerous people are involved, for instance a screenwriter, a director, cinematographers, and actors. Thus, Stam and Raengo assert that while mostly only one individual works on a novel, numerous people are involved in creating a film (17). This also results in many different opinions on setting, plot, characters, themes, lightning and so forth, which then leads to