A fierce, scathing opprobrium towards India’s caste division and ubiquitous corruption, Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani’s THE WHITE TIGER is a riveting, kinetic, rags-to-riches tale, revering Aravind Adiga’s source novel with high fidelity.

Set in 2010, the frame story is a successful entrepreneur Balram Halwai (Gourav), composing an email to the then Chinese premier Wen Jiaobao, who is scheduled to visit India in a few days, relates his ascendency from a low caste echelon and asks for a meeting with Wen, also proclaims that now the world belongs to the yellow and the brown.

Balram’s voiceover (which sometimes feels over-elaborate and distracting) harks back to his childhood steeped in poverty, his stunted education and all the misery associated with the underclass (exploited by the wealthy landlord, the dearth of medical facility, his sage-looking grandmother turns out to be a money-grubbing hag, there is a whiff of gynophobia here, even the caste-defying female politician, the greatest socialist is a crook through and through, though I do enjoy Swaroop Sampat’s snippiness in playing her), but Balram is a canny and cunning go-getter, reckoning himself as a “white tiger”, a rarity that stands out from the crowds, he grabs an opportunity to become the chauffeur of Ashok Shah (Rao), the younger son of his village’s snooty and obnoxious landlord, aka. the Stork (Manjrekar). Ashok returns from USA after many years, now married with Pinky (Chopra), a born-and-raised New Yorker, the couple isn’t like others, they do not treat Balram like a servant, and Pinky is especially repulsed by the shibboleth of discrimination. Everything suggests the three of them can break the caste boundary and friendship will germinate, but on the night of Pinky’s birthday, a joyride goes terribly awry, what follows jolts Balram into reconsidering his master’s ostensible modern attitude and introspecting his own ingrown servitude.

The movie’s tone also takes a sharp turn after Balram is wrong-footed by the reveal of Ashok and Pinky’s true color, the prior playful, carefree vibes are supplanted by a menacing, subdued gloom that bodes ill, once Balram’s a-rooster-escaping-from-its-coop resolution settles in, there is no turning back of the imminent bloodletting, but when that occurs, three quarters of the film’s running time has elapsed, which inevitably, foreshortens Balram’s ascension to be the owner of a taxi company in Bangalore, therefore takes some credibility out of this cautionary tale, as if venality alone can work the magic of actualization an “Indian dream”. That said, Gourav is such an extraordinarily multifaceted performer, he can alternate between being smarmy, wide-eyed, indignant, hurt, world-savvy or callous at a moment’s notice, and when he beams, his open-faced smile is infectious, yet deep in your heart, you know you cannot trust that smile.

Thematically a comparison with Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE (2019) is only to be expected, both tackling the gaping disparity between the rich and the poor with estimable lucidity and irony, but if PARASITE is ingenious in its nested structure and unexpected turns of events, THE WHITE TIGER has less flair in that aspect, Bahrani’s proficiency and cinematic eye (stupendous crane shots are legion, the movie’s chromatic compositions are well coordinated, etc.) are in evidence, but the film has no surprise in store, you may expect Balram’s mistreatments well before him (guess who is taking the rap for the hit-and-run?), and the climatic murder part has no frisson, and how can you response to the cynical message? Can you root for Balram without scruples when he sloughs off his have-nots past and doesn’t raise an eyebrow for the cruel consequences? Something is iffy in THE WHITE TIGER’s stance on how to become a (self-) made man. It is too cynical by simplifying the issue in question, for my money, it aims to flaunt rather than illuminate, and this is where I rest my case.

referential entries: Ritesh Batra’s THE LUNCHBOX (2013, 7.3/10); Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE (2019, 8.0/10); Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008, 8.1/10).

Title: The White Tiger

Year: 2021

Genre: Crime, Drama

Country: India, USA

Language: Hindi, English

Director/Screenwriter: Ramin Bahrani

based on the novel by Aravind Adiga

Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans

Cinematography: Paolo Carnera

Editing: Ramin Bahrani, Tim Streeto

Cast:

Adarsh Gourav

Rajkummar Rao

Priyanka Chopra

Vijay Maurya

Mahesh Manjrekar

Sanket Shanware

Akshay Sharma

Harshit Mahawar

Sandeep Singh

Vedant Sinha

Kamlesh Gill

Swaroop Sampat

Satish Kumar

Rating: 7.0/10