“The White Tiger,” is the engrossing screen adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s bestselling novel about the rich and poor in modern India. If you haven’t heard much about it, that’s because Netflix has decided to dump this essential film into their maze-like catalogue, without an ounce of Oscar promotion. For shame. Unlike some of the pretenders about to be unleashed before the Oscar deadline lifts next week, including “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and “Malcolm and Marie”, director Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Adiga’s source material is staggering stuff and worthy of Academy consideration.
This is a tale narrated by a Hindu driver for the rich, Balram (Adarsh Gourav), who recounts his own rags-to-riches story, tracing his start as a work slave in an impoverished town to being a major wheeler and dealer in the Indian crime world. Balsam sees himself as a white tiger, a rare animal, said to be born only once every few decades, who manages to defy the odds and escape the fate given to him of being born in a poor Indian village.
Balram, quite indelibly, knows that the only ways for him to get out of his ghetto are via crime or politics, and he sees the family he serves doing just that — bribing and extorting lawmakers into serving their own interests, including tax evasion and turning a blind eye on their corruption. Balram abides by his master’s commands, a loyal servant, taking in the abusive behavior of crime family boss, The Stork (Mahesh Manjrekar). However, Strok’s son, Ashok (Bollywood legend Rajkummar Rao), the American-educated son of the Landlord, and his Brooklyn-born wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas), have more empathy for Balram, treating him more like one of their own than any kind of master or servant. A friendship grows between them.
That all changes when a hit-and-run involving Ashok and Pinky leads to Baram being asked to take the blame for killing a pedestrian boy, even signing a confession that can be used if the coverup fails. This act of betrayal is enough for the once-submissive Balram to go full-Scarface and take destiny into his own hands. This enlightenment on the part of Balram, if you want to call it that, is meant to be a warning sign for India’s 1%; eventually, the fair-minded and morally-righteous good people of that country will have had enough of the corruption and may very well rise up.
The story of "The White Tiger" spans three decades and a merciless amount of plot strands. Clocking in at an ambitious 130 minutes in length is still not enough to give us the full story here. I almost wished writer-director Bahrani had added an extra hour and turned his film into an epic Godfather-like saga, tackling the rise of Balram as the head honcho of a multi-million dollar driver’s company. Regardless, you’re never less than riveted watching the film Bahrani gives us.
Bahrani, an Iranian-American filmmaker, once championed for his great indies (“Goodbye Solo” and “99 Homes”) is a close friend to ‘Tiger’ novelist Adiga — they both studied arts at Columbia University. Their vision is aided here by the superb acting. Chopra-Jonas, a former Miss World and Bollywood starlet, brings cunning grace to the role of a woman who might not be as morally-aligned as she perceives herself to be. Rao, filled with his own set of contradictions, is an amalgam of unpredictability, an unstable presence who starts as a friend to Balmar only to, at his grotesque father’s insistence, turn his back on him when things start going south.
However, it’s Gourav, the Mumbai-raised singer-songwriter, who is the nucleus of this film. His performance is filled with wit, humor, heartbreak and a meta-satirical awareness that keeps the viewer fully invested in his corner. Bahrani’s camera, aided by DP Paolo Carnera’s luscious colors, creates an immersive world filled with machiavellian allure. The stakes in “The White Tiger” couldn’t be any higher. The disparity between rich and poor in India has been growing steadily with each passing year — call it capitalism run amok, or as Balmar likes to describe his country, one populated by “men with big bellies, and men with small bellies. And only two destinies: eat, or get eaten up.”
SCORE: B+