Different strokes for different folks

Life of Pi has got almost identical ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, an American website that aggregates movie reviews, and a Chinese site that aggregate online scores, Mtime. But if you scratch deeper and read what people have actually written, you'll understand why Americans generally see it as a good movie but for most Chinese, it's a great one.

Of the scores of reviews I've read from mainstream American press, I have the impression that the emphasis is on the beauty of the ocean adventure and the difficulty of visually realizing it on the screen - a point Lee himself reiterated during his press tour in China.

Chinese film lovers saw that story, of course, known as "the first story" in the movie. But we instantly grasped the second story, the one about cannibalism and unspeakable cruelty, the one Ang Lee seemingly throws away in the end.

The first batch of filmgoers, usually cineastes with keener observations than the general public, quickly started online discussions about the symbolism and the hidden messages. This, in turn, was built into a crescendo of ever increasing curiosity, which is substantiated by the absolute unusual box-office arc of the second week return surpassing the first week and the third week holding steady.

The magnitude of such strong word of mouth does not come with any advertising budget or star power. It has to come from those who have seen the movie and loved it so much they turn into volunteer promoters. The last time this happened with Chinese cinema was two years ago with Jiang Wen's Let the Bullets Fly, which similarly caused a mania of interpretation (and ran into official trouble because some of the readings made it too subversive).

I'm not in a position to say American audiences did not see layers of meaning in Life of Pi, or if they do, were blase about the complexity. But for the Chinese, the story is intriguing mainly because it is prone to analyses. (It doesn't hurt that the special effects are first class.)

I count myself as pretty acute when it comes to embedded meanings, but after I read some of the reviews, I realized how much wonderful details had eluded me, such as the contour of the floating island as a reclining Buddha.

A running gag among film critics here in Beijing: During a chat among some pundits, one offered, "I believe I've discovered a third story" but another chimed in, "Let me tell you my 'fourth' story first."

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