'Life of Pi' is a parable about parables

CALL HIM Ishmael.

Or Jonah. Or Noah. But his name in this sea story is Pi.

An Indian boy (Suraj Sharma) months adrift on the trackless ocean, trying to survive on a small lifeboat that he must share with a tiger - his only companion, his mortal enemy, the thing that gives him purpose, the thing that's waiting to take his life.

Here we have the capital "P" makings of a parable, or in this case, a parable about parables. The entire story (drawn from the Yann Martel novel) is posed as a challenge, described by its narrator as a story that will make an atheist believe in God.

A tall order, surely.

It's a safer bet this visual amazement from dude-can-do-anything director Ang Lee will make you believe in the future of 3-D.

"Life of Pi" has been described as a better 3-D movie than "Avatar" by no less an authority than "Avatar's" director James Cameron, who's complained for years that shabby 3-D has given the technology a bad name.

Well, here is Lee to lift 3-D from the realm of quickie gimmick and restore its potential as artistic spectacle.

"Pi" is not an interstellar adventure like "Avatar," but it's transporting in its own way. We start in India, where the family of Pi Patel lives in the magical French-Indian seaside town of Pondicherry, a little slice of paradise (Eden?) where the Patel family owns and operates a zoo.

There are two of every kind in this menagerie but only one of little Pi, a religious free agent who takes what he likes from Hinduism, Islam and Christianity and merges them into a customized belief system - to the annoyance of his father, who sees in Pi a dangerous naivete.

Lee drives this home in a riveting scene of Pi trying to make friends with the zoo's tiger by offering it a piece of meat. The tiger advances, looking past the appetizer and straight at the edible Pi.

The scene foreshadows the dangers to come, when the Patels load their animals aboard a freighter and make for a new life in Canada. They are caught up in a tempest that separates Pi from his family and leaves him in the boat, face to face with a tiger.

Now about that tiger.

Movies have been trying to amaze us with digital animals since "Jumanji," and they have made slow progress. It's very difficult to trick the human eye, though Peter Jackson came closest in "King Kong."

The animators and designers working on "Pi," however, have reached a new level of prowess. It's very hard to distinguish between their 3-D digital tiger and the real animal used in early shots.

When the creature takes a swipe at Pi's head, you'll duck (in part because Lee shifts perspective so that your head is right on Pi's shoulders).

It's movie showmanship, for sure, but it's also crucial. The animal needs to be real so that Pi's ordeal seems real.

This is central to Pi's epic of survival and spiritual progress - the process by which he learns to evade the tiger, understand it, live with it and, at some point, even to thrive alongside it without losing sight of its essential, deadly nature.

The tale is by turns harrowing and gorgeous. Lee and his animators stage great, showy set pieces of Pi under the stars at night, a whale rolling aside the boat in the phosphorescent algae. And there's an eye-popping interlude on a floating island of exotic plants and animals.

All of this wonderment, this digital sleight of hand, might make a cynic wonder if it's all some kind of gossamer, glow-in-the-dark hustle.

Pi's own father would view it with a suspicious mind, and as a seaborne journey of spiritual enlightenment, I preferred the very similar but less fanciful "Cast Away."

Lee, though, has a better hole card: the great Indian actor Irrfan Khan. He plays the adult Pi and is the movie's narrator, and he is unequaled on screen for quiet, persuasive gravity. It's Khan who sells the stirring conclusion and finesses the story's risky narrative switcheroo, working his own magic long after the digital 3-D fireworks have ceased.

Blog: philly.com/KeepItReel