10 Best Films With Unreliable Narrators

‘Pi’ Patel tells his story to a writer who wants to write a book about his life. He describes how, as a boy, he was on a ship that capsized with many animals from his family zoo. He managed to survive by boarding a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and an angry tiger named Richard Parker.

The hyena kills the zebra and orangutan before it is killed by the tiger. There are many other events that happen during his voyage that seem to stretch the limits of believability. The relationship Pi develops with the tiger is especially interesting as it seems unfeasible that it would leave him alive when so starved of food. They eventually make it to shore before Richard Parker wanders off into the jungle, with Pi sad that he didn’t even look back as he walked away, further anthropomorphising the animal.

Pi is brought to a hospital where he tells insurance investigators a different story where he is on the boat with his mother, a sailor and a cook, all who end up meeting grisly fates. The implication is that Pi has created the story with the animals as a more pleasant to what actually happened. The writer and the viewers are left to decide which story is the truth.