Hindi
Life of Pi: A gripping tale finely executed
MUMBAI: When Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) helms a film, the least you can expect from him is a saga with insights and with his newest film Life of Pi, he doesn‘t disappoint. He takes the seemingly impossible-to-film book, written by Yann Martel, and transforms it into a visual delight with 3D and CGI thrown in for good effect. Not since Avatar have these two been used with better results though 3D has since gone on to be a widely used filmmaking tool.
Life of Pi seeks to encompass a wide array of emotions and situations and succeeds in all of them. The result is a film about finding faith, the triumph of human endeavour, coming of age and childlike delight all seamlessly woven together without missing a beat. And, considering that most of the film has only one boy and a tiger adrift on the Pacific Ocean on a life boat, that is saying a lot. Even the otherwise overused ‘voiceover‘ tool is so well used it becomes unnoticeable.
It is the story of a young boy, Pi, and his family moving bag and baggage and a hold full of zoo animals from Puducherry to North Amerca on a ship. When the ship sinks in a storm, Pi and a handful of animals are the only survivors. The ménage of animals is gradually reduced to only Richard Parker, the tiger. How Pi manages to tame the wild beast to form an uneasy and easily broken truce, gives the thrust to the film. It is almost impossible to believe that the tiger is largely CG though for some scenes Bengal tigers were used for reference.
But alone on the ocean, Pi‘s mind wanders and as the director takes you through some of the fantasy he experiences, the viewer gasps in delight at the sheer beauty of the imagination. With the physical and the metaphysical so well blending into each other it‘s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. Truly, suspension of disbelief was never more rewarding.
Some debuts are just meant to happen and such is the case with young Pi, Suraj Sharma, who is entirely believable and will be a talent to watch for in the coming years. While Irrfan Khan and Tabu, in short roles are as competent as they are expected to be, Adil Hussain, as Pi‘s father caps his unconventional career with another brilliant performance.
But, of course, this is Ang Lee‘s film, one of the best directors of contemporary times.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
