Premise: An enterprising Indian underclassman schemes his way to becoming a successful businessman.
Apparently, there's a novel this is based on, and as is my tradition, this is where I say I've never read it and know nothing about it. Based on the movie, I'm assuming it's a long novel though. The White Tiger is an expansive tale that covers years of the protagonist's (Balram, played by Adarsh Gourav) life. It covers his early days living in a poor village and how he turns a few opportunities into a job with a wealthy family as a driver. From there, a mix of hard work and just plain being an asshole gets him a cushy job working for the family out of Delhi. He constantly pushes up against the constraints of his caste before committing a truly heinous act that gets him the success he dreams of. The whole story is unwieldy. I get why this earned a screenplay Oscar nomination this year. Balram's tireless narration has to explain virtually the entire caste and economic system of India while also telling his own unique story. And even still, the movie plays like it's only an adaptation of the first third of a much larger story.
I felt a little cheated by the setup of the movie. It promises something more grandiose than I actually got. The murder he's wanted for? Nothing came of it. The murder he's forced to take credit for? Also, nothing. His rise as a businessman? Told via montage in a few minutes at the end. It's sort of like ending Citizen Kane right as he makes his first paper a success but still keeping the Rosebud stuff. I wish I hadn't been promised all that early on, because it did make me watch the movie as more of a ticking clock or checklist than something to enjoy in the moment. It would be an interesting double-feature with There Will Be Blood, actually. Both good looking, dirty movies with strong central performances and about compromised morality for financial success. They even make an annoying story jump at the end.
I really appreciated this as a glimpse into modern India. It shows how the tremendous wealth mixes with the poverty of the lower classes. I think it does as good a job as anything I've seen describing the caste system. I'm used to the ways that the U.S. can have great wealth living next to relative poverty. It's interesting seeing how that looks in other countries. I love the ways that Balram rejects tradition - his grandmother's control over the family; his arranged marriage. His employer, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and his wife, Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), are great depictions of the new generation of wealth. They claim to reject many of the old notions of caste and how to treat one's servants, yet, they still keep the servants and mistreat them when convenient. They just also give speeches about how it's wrong. Getting to the end of the film, when Balsam speaks of how he treats his employees right, one wonders how many economic setbacks Balsam is from reneging on those promises he made to be better.
I'll admit that I missed some of the satire elements I'm told are in the movie. Perhaps those were more in the book, then people saw them in the movie. Or, maybe people just think that every story about someone succeeding in a capitalistic structure through luck or misdeed is satire. I'm not sure. It's a great story of the ways that an abused capitalistic structure can make a success out of someone. I mean, he literally makes his fortune from stolen government bribe money, which speaks to the cronyism of the structure.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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