To book club members and bibliophiles everywhere, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi stands as one of their most closely guarded works protected against Hollywood, fearing butchering in the hands of an incapable director. The book is as literary as literature can get, notoriously being named an “unfilmable” book. With Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Sense and Sensibility) adding some caliber to the picture, is there hope for a film with so many odds stacked against it?

The trailer released earlier this year caught the attention of filmgoers, although the fantasy/adventure arc to the story turned off a lot of people. This is a serious book, one with themes of polytheism and cannibalism at that, and yet they’re giving it the Hugo treatment? But Hugo, after all, did work well, and its marketing also catered more specifically to the children’s demographic.

Pi received rave reviews at this year’s New York International Film Festival, getting it some Oscar discussion and as much commercial hype as can be expected in a month fraught with new James Bond and Twilight installments-can this quasi-phantasmagoric picture hold its own in a commercial industry?

The story opens with a 50-something year old Ontario-based Pi talking to a reporter about his life, the writer having been told that the story of his survival would make him believe in God. He tells him about his childhood in India, his full name “Piscine,” after a swimming pool in France that his uncle had loved. He shortened his name to Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, also infinite.

As he grows older, he diverges from his mother’s religion, Hinduism, to Christianity and Islam, finding sense in all three. His family’s zoo is no longer profitable in India, so his parents decide to uproot them from their home and move to Canada by sea voyage, selling the animals once they get there. They are shipwrecked, and Pi, the only survivor, is left drifting on a boat with a zebra, a hyena, and an adult Bengal tiger.

At first, the film seems to be all that it implies, a Forrest Gump-style travelogue about an adolescent Indian boy with an unfortunate name. It’s gorgeously filmed, but wearing – that is, until the shipwreck provides a catalyst that sets the rest of the film in motion. The shipwreck itself is haunting – there’s no climax or ceremony to his family’s demise, and so as the dulled light dissipates into the murky water, you feel a sense of loss akin to Pi’s.

The film’s 3D also starts to come into full effect around here – Pi watching the ship sink is like nothing ever achieved on film before. Seeing Pi fight the tiger doesn’t feel as cheap as it could’ve – it’s even quite thrilling. But the most memorable frames are the ones provided by the dimension of the ocean, boat and sky. I’ve never been a big fan of 3D, but the use of it here is mesmerizing. This film is a fully realized use of the medium, a vision in a league far ahead of Martin Scorsese or James Cameron – and that’s truly saying something.

This film could be considered a triumph singularly for its visual achievement – but that would be a discredit to all involved. That’s because Life of Pi is a lyrical and moving cinematic journey that never fails to engage its audience. For most of the film, we’re a part of Pi’s quest for survival, witness to his frustration with god and with the development of his relationship with the carnivorous tiger he’s now stuck with. On this alone it works as a coming-of-age story – but again, that would be a discredit to the film makers, as that’s not their agenda.

Suraj Sharma also deserves acknowledgement for his performance – there’s unlikely to be a harder role to get for your first. For most of the movie, the story is devoid of any other human characters, but he pulls it off remarkably well, blending into the story rather than dominating it.

To those who read the book (I haven’t), the ending may not have been a surprise. But that’s what I love about this as an adaption – you think you know where it’s going, but then it does something that challenges you to think deeper – that’s all I can say, in fear of ruining the film’s final big twist. The film is charged with a resonant force of philosophical individualism, creating a wholly unique film experience.

A mix of visual poetry and existential profundity, Life of Pi is a rapturous vision that connects with its audience on levels both intellectual and emotional – whether they may be expecting it to or not.

Hypable Reader Review: A