Colloquium 2

The life of Pi and Black Water

Humans have a long history of relationships with animals through bonding. Our relationship with animals goes a long way back to more than 50,000 years ago. We share the world with them and undoubtedly, a human-animal interaction has occurred at a point in our lives. This human-animal bond tends to be highly featured in many movies and television shows because of the positive responses the audience tends to have towards animals along with the fact that animals tend to commonly simplify human characteristics and therefore, have a primal role in the business of story-making. However, movies often tend to emphasize both sides of human-animal interactions; the friendly human-animal interaction and the dangerous human-animal interaction. Both films, The Life of Pi andBlack Water have illustrated the idea of ‘inter-species’ or in other words, human-animal relationship, as a foundation for understanding how place and space ungird human subjectivity.

The filmThe Life of Piis a survival drama film that was directed by Ang Lee. The film is a 3-D adaptation of a novel written by Yann Martel. The story revolves around the tale of the life of the younger son of an Indian zoo owner, Pi Patel who survives a shipwreck during a storm in the Pacific Ocean with a tiger for 227 days. The film follows the form of a story within a story within a story. Pi Patel is a sixteen-year-old Indian boy who grew up in the south Indian city of Pondicherry where the zoo that his father runs is located. However, Pi’s father decided to close the zoo and move his family to Canada where he intends to settle and sell the zoo animals. The main factor that led Pi’s father to make his decision is the government’s upheaval that was a source of unrest for him. Therefore, Pi and his whole family went onboard of the Tsimtum, a Japanese freighter that’s headed to Canada, along with the zoo animals. The destruction of the Japanese ship was a result of unexplained event. Pi was the only human survivor of the shipwreck. However, some animals survived and shared the lifeboat with Pi. The animals who were onboard where a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a tiger called Richard Parker. The hyena ends up killing both the orangutan and the zebra before Richard Parker kills the hyena which left pi alone on a lifeboat with a tiger for 227 days. While at sea, Pi and Richard Parker face many challenges and miraculous occurrences. Their journey came to an end when they landed on a Mexican beach where Richard Parker immediately ran off to the jungle and Pi was found and taken to the hospital. While at the hospital, Pi was questioned by two Japanese men regarding what caused the Tsimtsumto sink. When Pi told them the story of what happened, the men didn’t believe him and asked for a more realistic version of the story which made Pi give them what they wanted. Pi ended up replacing the animal characters with other humans. However, that created doubt on the original story.

The film Black Water is a horror film directed by Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich. The film is inspired by the true story of a crocodile attack in Australia’s Northern Territory in December 2003. Gracie, a pregnant-women and her boyfriend, Adam alongside her sister Lee go on a vacation in Northern Australia. They all decided to go on a Blackwater Barry tour for fishing. However, after failing to catch any fish on the usual rote, their tour guide, Jim, decided to go on a deeper route towards the swamps in hopes of catching some fish. Unexpectedly, the boat gets capsized by a huge crocodile and ended up dumping everyone in the water. The attack leaves only three survivors who climbed a tree waiting for help. However, when they acknowledged that help will never come, they decided to try a different plan to get them out of the crocodile swamp. The three of them went through many challenges in getting followed by aggressive crocodiles in such muddy waters. Gracie ends up suffering from a leg injury, however, that didn’t stop her from killing the crocodile by shooting him with a gun. When the threat is averted, Gracie dies from blood loss.

Both films, The Life of Pi andBlack Water have illustrated the idea of ‘inter-species’ relationships. In the film, The Life of Pi, the ‘inter-species’ relationship was between Pi and Richard Parker, the tiger. In the beginning, Pi didn’t know that a tiger was with him on board since Richard Parker was hiding under the tarpaulin out of fear. However, as soon as Richard Parker reveals himself to Pi, it’s Pi who’s now afraid. Therefore, in the beginning, fear was the nature of their relationship. Pi tries his best to avoid any contact with Ricard Parker to protect himself that he built an improvised raft to stay in it. However, since territorial dominance is exhibited by every living being, Pi wanted to establish territorial dominance to help him survive his shared journey with Richard Parker. Pi states that “only one important topic was not addressed: the establishing of alpha-omega relationships with major lifeboat pests. I had to make him understand that I was the top tiger”. Furthermore, soon their relationship turns to a form of a compromise. The tiger is dependent on Pi for food and water and they both acknowledge that. Therefore, their compromise was that Richard Parker doesn’t attack Pi and Pi continues providing Richard Parker with food and water. Furthermore, in the film Black Water, the ‘inter-species’ relationship was between the three main characters and the crocodile. Throughout the whole movie, their ‘inter-species’ relationship was dominated by fear and terror and unlike the film The Life of Pi, their relationship doesn’t develop. The crocodiles were a serious life-threatening danger that kept stalking and attacking the people. Therefore, their relationship didn’t evolve. Moreover, both films, The Life of Pi andBlack Water follow the theme of survival. They’re set in a water environment and both films, humans enter a foreign environment and suffer unexpected life-threatening situations from the natural inhabitants of such environments.

The Life of Pi