The Life of Pi   (USA 2012) – A Reflection on The Redeemed Past

In Canada, a writer visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would also be sold. They board on a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm, followed by a shipwrecking. Pi survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal tiger nicknamed Richard Parker.

This is just one version of Pi’s experiences. There is another. And this raises the question of the nature of memory and of the facts of memory. Are they literal or symbolic? But more importantly: what is the value and affect we attach to the “incidents” of memory.

Questions about the film:

–What in the film touched you and why? How does it evoke something in your own life?

– Why do you think you are called to be attentive to this present moment at this time?

– What does the film say about memory and forgetting? How does the trauma of the present seek to eradicate the good of the past?

– In the film what is the essential tension? How is it maintained? How is it resolved?

– How is your understanding of what is the essential tension supported by the tension in your present life?

– Why is the image of water important in the film?

– What are the animals of our life? How do they shape the way we live?

Questions for Prayer and Reflection:

–  How does our past influence our present and our future?
– Where does God come into this in a real and practical way?
– In the film what elements in the past allowed the present to be lived positively; what elements negatively?
– How did the characters in the film negotiate this tension between the positive and the negative?
– In your own life what elements in the past, positive and negative contribute to the way you experience the tensions in your life now?
– How do you live with, or negotiate, that tension?
– Does the film and the reflection suggest other ways of dealing with that tension? If so what are they?
– What do you do with elements of the past that are not experienced as redeemed?

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This reflection is taken from www.fgitd.ca – a website which was developed to deal with current films and with further insights into the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. 

Finding God In the Dark: Taking the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to the Movies (Novalis) by Canadian Jesuits, John Pungente and Monty Williams, answered a need for those looking to have access to their spiritual life but who did not have access to spiritual direction.  The web site  – www.fgitd.ca – continues this work. Please go to the web site for further material on the theme of the reflection.

The 2013 series –  Redeeming the Time – available on the web-site  www.fgitd.ca  allows users to explore the ways in which God uses our responses to our past, how we live today, and how we anticipate what is coming, to develop a deeper spiritual intimacy with God.   Earlier series – beginning in 2005 – are archived on the site. Check it out . . it could change your life.