The White Tiger Review: Adarsh Gourav's Vibrant Performance Drives This Bold Story Of Rags To Riches

• Reviews
• Updated:January 22, 2021 10:29 IST

• Authors: Arunita Tiwari (Editorial Team)
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Rags to riches stories we’ve grown accustomed to end up sounding distant cousins of Disney fairy tales when one watches The White Tiger which hit Netflix this Friday. Ramin Bahrani’s film shakes things up a bit as it offers a protagonist willing to rattle up the economic food chain in which he ought to patiently wait his turn to be preyed up. The movie based on Arvind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize winning novel by the same name brings up caste, religion, patriarchy, politics, poverty, corruption and loyalty in a heady mix as it takes you out for a spin.

The White Tiger’s narrative unfolds in retrospect as the film’s protagonist Balram Halwai, a swanky taxi service owner in Bangalore, writes a letter to a Chinese Premier attending a tech conference in the city, sharing his life story as to how he shred his poverty-stricken backdrop to become an entrepreneur.

Sharp as whip Balram knows he doesn’t belong to the ‘rooster coop’ where just ought to live out the fate set for him and not rebel for freedom even when he is doing no more than breaking coal in the back of a tea shop of a tiny village in Bihar. So when he sees that the shrewd landlord of his village needs a second for his American return son Ashok, he becomes one.

It is as Balram pushes off from the ground just a little bit and away from the life his greedy grandmother has already planned out for him, the glaring differences between him and his ‘masters’ begin writing his story and he goes on with it unabashedly mocking and sneering at them making the narrative come alive. While his masters pretend, to their advantage, that he’s their friend or in even more dire circumstances their family, he finds himself right back in the coop he thought he had fled as Ashok’s wife Pinky in a drunk stupor runs over a child with their car and he’s called on to take the blame.

Caste, class, power, politics and oppression spin in and out of the story making Balram determined to break out. For one thing he knows for certain is that he is like the white tiger "a freak, a pervert of nature' born once a generation.”

The brilliance of the film lies in the fact that it engrosses you in Balram’s witty narrative in a way that you feel like peering into his mind to know what he’ll do next every time he’s backed into a corner. The story, however, does slow down in parts raking you on.

Adarsh Gourav makes a swanky arrival to the movies as the protagonist Balram in this antithesis of Slumdog Millionaire, snatching the film to his credit from right under the noses of its starry Bollywood cast. Priyanka Chopra looks like a natural in her supporting role as Pinky and holds her ground as the rebellious bahu in a family of patriarchs and seemingly the only one the family who knows that the word kindness exists in the dictionary but only when it is convenient.

The otherwise brilliant Rajkummar Rao is slightly out of pace as the U.S. return Ashok in this dominantly English language film. The actor seems to be trying extra hard in holding on to his American ascent which sadly makes the rest of his character slip.

Music and cinematography play a big role bringing cinematic richness and highlighting the glaring differences in class in which Balram and his master operate. From opulence to dinginess the cinematography leaves no stone unturned in delivering the harsh realities. The cunningness and curiosity of the protagonist are brilliantly framed in his expressions and stance as he does a lot of listening and observing in his surroundings. The Punjabi pop music that often bursts through the speakers sinks seamlessly with the vibrant storytelling.

Ramin Bahrani movie powers Adiga’s exceptional storytelling with a cinematic life of its own. The film is definitely on the Netflix shelves to trend for days.