Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Life of Pi 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

A Brighter Life

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 31, 2016

The UHD release of Life of Pi was originally announced with a March 1 street date, along with other titles from Fox, Sony and Warner intended as the format's debut. On March 1, however, Pi was nowhere to be found, presumably due to production delays. Now that the disc is generally available, though, it turns out to be worth the wait.

Ang Lee's multiple Oscar winner is a unique creation. The extras on the original Blu-ray (included in this package) documented the long evolution through which a novel originally deemed unfilmable was transformed into an epic fantasy that is also, at the same time, an intimate drama. Pi's narrative deliberately blurs the line between illusion and reality, and it could not have been achieved without photo-realistic CGI images so convincing that their digital craftsmanship is invisible. The most famous creation of the Oscar-winning effects team is the tiger known as "Richard Parker", who is second only to protagonist Pi Patel as the film's most important character. Occasional shots of a real tiger appear in Pi, but they are indistinguishable from the creature born and bred entirely in the digital domain.

Screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

For further discussion of the film, please refer to Casey Broadwater's original review of the Blu-ray disc.

Life of Pi 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc. Watch for 4K screenshots at a later date.

Life of Pi provides an interesting case study in the translation to UHD. Like the majority of the early UHD releases, the film was completed on a DI at 2K, which means that any gain in perceived resolution must be a result of up-conversion. But like Avatar and Prometheus, Pi was also filmed in native 3D, and the film's creative team repeatedly notes in the extras that 3D was intended to be the preferred viewing format. (Wherever possible, they worked on the film in 3D, even in editing.) The challenge for a UHD rendition of Pi is less a matter of increasing the resolution than of using HDR encoding to create a perception of depth in a format that doesn't support 3D (which is a widely noted omission in the UHD specs).

Fox's HEVC/H.265-encoded 2160p UHD presentation of Pi uses HDR encoding to "turn up" the colors of Claudio Miranda's Oscar-winning cinematography in almost every scene. The increase in saturation and brightness may not be as immediately obvious in the early scenes set in Pondicherry, where the profusion of vivid hues prevents any one of them from standing out, but once the film reaches its central drama of Pi and Richard Parker adrift in their lifeboat and raft, the difference can't be missed. Against the array of blues in sea and sky, the frame's contrasting colors pop with new intensity: the reddish interior of the lifeboat, Pi's dark skin and light-colored attire, Richard Parker's striped and multi-shaded fur, the silver of the flying fish and numerous other shades. Brightness and contrast are also improved, so that even relatively monochromatic scenes, like the magical nighttime encounter with a school of jellyfish and a massive whale, seem more immediate and tactile. The UHD's image may not fully approximate the 3D version's "reach out and grab you" immediacy, but the additional vibrancy brings a sense of depth to the experience that exceeds anything on the 2D Blu-ray (which, I hasten to add, is still an excellent image).

Pi's encounter with the meerkat population of the "floating isle" provides a fine example of how HDR encoding can increase the perception of superior resolution even when the source is less than 4K. With the additional contrast and color saturation, the long shots featuring hordes of CGI meerkats appear more detailed on the UHD, and the ability to make out individual creatures in the crowd is enhanced. The same effect applies to the dense and mysterious tangle of vines and undergrowth of which the isle is apparently constituted.

Unlike the fire effects in the UHD rendition of Mad Max: Fury Road, none of the CG artistry in Life of Pi appears to suffer from 4K/HDR treatment. In fact, the only questionable difference that I spotted was in the present-day scenes where the adult Pi is telling his story to the unnamed writer played by Rafe Spall. Because those sequences are intended as the film's anchor in reality, their palette is more realistic and they should look relatively similar on both the Blu-ray and the UHD, but, at least to my eye, the Blu-ray has more natural-looking fleshtones. This may simply be a matter of proper calibration, which, as of this writing, is still unavailable for UHD.

Overall, though, Life of Pi is my favorite of the UHDs I have viewed to date. The question of accuracy remains unanswered (for those who care about such things), but the disc's HDR encoding seems entirely in accord with the film's magical-realistic themes and visual style.

Life of Pi 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with its other initial UHD releases, Fox has not included a Dolby Atmos track. The UHD's DTS-HD MA 7.1 track appears to be identical to the Blu-ray's, and it is as impressive as ever. See our previous review.

Life of Pi 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 4K disc contains no extras. The accompanying Blu-ray disc is identical to the original release and contains the extras previously reviewed here. The additional extras from the 3D disc (reviewed here) are not included.

Life of Pi 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like all of Blu-ray.com's UHD reviews so far, this one of Life of Pi remains provisional at this early stage of the format, when standards and calibration remain unsettled. Even so, it is hard to dispute that the combination of 4K and HDR has brought an enchanting new vividness to Ang Lee's mystical tale. For anyone excited about the possibilities of the format, the disc is a must-buy. That the film is one of the best from the last decade only adds to the disc's appeal.