The White Tiger

When I saw the trailer for The White Tiger I was really intrigued (I have not read the best-selling novel by Aravind Adiga upon which it is based) so I decided to see it last night.  I enjoyed it because it reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire and Parasite, although it is not quite as charming as the former or as unsettling as the latter.  Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) was the smartest student in his school when he was a boy and had great dreams of earning a scholarship to get out of his poor Indian village.  However, when his father is unable to pay the harsh landlord of the village (Mahesh Manjrekar), his grandmother pulls him from school to work in the family tea shop.  He is told that this is the best he can hope from life but he is ambitious.  He conspires to become the driver for the landlord's son Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), who has recently returned from studying in America, and his American wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra).  Thinking himself lucky to have risen so far, Balram does everything he can to ingratiate himself to them.  While they are kind to him, they still think of themselves as better and have no compunction about betraying him to save themselves after a horrifying incident.  Balram eventually decides to become a white tiger, an aberration in nature that appears only once in a generation, and rebels against the rigid caste system that has held him down.  This is a sort of rags to riches story with quite a bit of dark humor but it is also a scathing indictment of an economic system that conspires to keep the majority of the people subservient to a privileged few.  The narrative employs flashbacks as Balram narrates his life story in a letter to the Chinese premier who is visiting India and, while this does lesson the dramatic tension a bit, it keeps the audience invested to see how a lowly servant is able to become an entrepreneur.  Gourav is incredibly appealing in the role because he makes you sympathize with Balram even though some of his actions are pretty despicable.  I do think the ending goes off the rails a little bit but I liked this movie and I would definitely recommend it.  It is now in theaters for a limited engagement and then it will stream on Netflix beginning January 22.