Adrift with a tiger and the film god

I'm like Pi. I feel adrift over the Pacific. There are lots of confusions, constant surprises. There are times you feel defeated. You feel like your faith is being tested. I look at God and ask, 'Why?' But it's a happy why

– Ang Lee, director

By Anupama Chopra

"You become the movie you are making," the Oscar-winning director Ang Lee said in a recent telephone interview. Given that the movie in question is Life of Pi, based on the award-winning, fantastical novel about a boy and a Bengal tiger marooned on a boat for 227 days, Lee is feeling a bit more at sea than usual these days. With this film Lee has not just defied the old showbiz adage "Never work with children or animals," but he has also taken on a few more challenges — like water, 3D, religion and the expectations of millions of rapt readers of the book by Yann Martel. Although Life of Pi was just a few months away from release (it is set to open on November 21), Lee was still in the editing room.

"I'm like Pi," he explained. "I feel adrift over the Pacific. I haven't locked the picture yet. There are lots of confusions, constant surprises. There are times you feel defeated. You feel like your faith is being tested. When you're on the ocean, it's spiritual. I look at God and ask, 'Why?' But it's a happy why."

Lee, who is gentle and soft-spoken in life, has always been fearless in his cinematic choices. In a career spanning 20 years he has continually jumped across genres. The Lee oeuvre includes a Jane Austen novel (Sense and Sensibility), a Chinese martial-arts epic (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), a comic-book adaptation (Hulk) and the deeply moving love story of two cowboys, for which he won the Best Director Oscar in 2006—Brokeback Mountain.

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