The $5 movie night ensured that even being 40 minutes early meant I had to wait in an infinitely long queue with nothing to do but stare at the large screen TVs. Disney is so commercial. A trailer featuring the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy comes on, quickly followed by a trailer of a sensationalized version of The Wizard of Oz, and then by an even more sensationalized, dramatized version of Jack and the Beanstalk.

I wondered how little justice Ang Lee would do to Yann Martel’s 2001 Man Booker-winning novel.

As someone who’s briefly lived in, fallen in love with, and left Pondicherry, a city in India, I can tell you this—you do not simply leave Pondicherry. You take a part of its sandy beaches with you. Sometimes this can be quite literal. And you leave a part of your soul in the little bit of heaven you’re glad not many have discovered yet. So when I saw the delicacy with which “Life of Pi” captured the hues of Pondicherry, I was sold.

A raw sense of truth and innocence permeates through the entire story. “Life of Pi” is the literal and spiritual journey of Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) as he travels with his family and the animals from their zoo on a ship from South India to Canada. 

Sailing across the Pacific, the ship sinks during a storm, which leaves Pi stuck on a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Royal Bengal tiger. A coming of age story, Pi is forced to grow up faster than he normally would as his world begins to collapse around him. “Life of Pi” is an unending metaphor on the abrupt, unceremonious nature of letting go—whether it is friends, family or home.

Far more than a movie, “Life of Pi” is an experience. So if you go looking for Avatar, which was Pocahontas repackaged with 5,000 metric tons of special effects, you should—A, learn the right way to pronounce Avatar, and B, go elsewhere.

A significant minority of the audience will fall asleep at some point during the movie. The majority will come out after the movie fixating upon how colorful the movie was, probably trying their best to unsuccessfully imitate an Indian accent. “Life of Pi” is for the rest of you.

Trivia: Initially cast in a cameo role, Tobey Maguire was replaced later when director Ang Lee felt Maguire’s star power overwhelmed the small role.