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Source
I was not aware of the movie, 'The White Tiger' (an adaptation of 2008 with the same name), until @felixxx told me to watch it (like 50 times...lol). But he was too persistent with it and I finally succumbed to the pressure and watched it along with @bemier and @incublus (I would love to hear their thoughts as well). I remember promising a thorough review to Felix. Here is me with a critical analysis of this movie.
There is a lot that I want to talk about. It tells the story of a Poor man, Balram Halwai, a low caste man from a poor background in a remote village who must 'serve' his master and become a successful entrepreneur.
The best thing about this movie is the brilliant performance of Adarsh Gaurav (Balram). It was a very memorable performance and even outshines the other senior actors Priyanka Chopra and Rajkumar Rao.
Another positive is the production quality, it is shot well. It shows a very raw picture, almost forced most of the time (remember Slumdog Millionaire?).
Plot
SPOILER WARNING: There will be a lot of spoilers from now on. If you want to watch it, come back to this post after you watched it
Balram Halwai, tells his story to a Chinese official who is coming to visit India in 2010 and meet aspiring entrepreneurs. Balram wants to meet him and starts writing to him.
Balram was offered a scholarship but he couldn't get into the school because he was forced into work as his father was unable to pay off the village landlord, 'the stork'.
Balram becomes a driver for Stork's son, Ashok (Rajkumar Rao), who recently came from America along with his wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra).
Ashok and Pinky were drunk one night and Pinky insisted on driving the car. But they ran over a person on the road and ran away. The next day Ashok was made to sign a statement that he was driving the car, not Pinky. But there were no reports of the incident reported and Balram remained their driver.
Guilt-ridden Pinky goes back to America leaving Ashok in a bad situation. This was the time Balram tried to get out of this Slave mindset and tried to get out of there with a bag full of cash. He planned to kill Ashok and ran away with the money.
Balram goes to Bangalore and bribes the authorities to set up his own driving business. Now he has become the master and many drivers work under him but he treats them as just employees.
A movie made for just a Western audience
Any Indian who has lived in India for more than a few weeks would tell you this is not what 2008's India was... this whole Slave-Master relationship is so 1950s. The movie was full of stereotypes, the same old Caste divides, religious divides and economic divides told in a propagandist way. It could have been told much better and there are movies which have touched all these sensitive topics and shown much harsher realities, but in a more believable way.
I mean, look at Masaan, so many stories on touching topics like Patriarchy, caste system, and social divide and in so much better way and more natural way. Not like this with bold statements and nothing to support them with, no nuisances and details. It is more 'Saying' not 'Showing' and I always love the latter.
Right from the opening scenes, you can get that the director is not at all versed in the Hindu culture. There is a dialogue about Hindus having 30 million Gods, which is such a basic error. There are either 33 types (Koti) or 33 Crores (330 million) mentioned in texts and this is such a basic knowledge that only the NRIs and foreigners would make an error. This is not a huge deal but I wanted to point that out. I went on to see who is the director and all my doubts were solved. An Iranian-American director who knows nothing about these complex and sensitive topics in India.
Many incidents are just outright propaganda. Feels like I am reading the BBC or Al Jazeera articles on India again...lol. The movie shows that if you are a Muslim living in India, you won't even get a job and you have to hide your identity. I have seen these scripts a lot of times from specific directors. Nothing new about this. Same old stereotypes.
You will run a successful business even after committing a murder just because you have such an 'Indian' face? Who wrote this? I have not read the book but if this is the climax of the book too, I am not sure how people digested this nonsense.
Too many references to the Country as a whole
If you watch the movie you will notice that the story is being told as if this is the story of India. Not just a 'poor man' from India. The movie constantly says things like this is India, this happens in India as if he is not telling the story of himself but of everyone in the country.
There are so many things that can be shown differently. Balram had so many opportunities to run away with money without Killing Ashok but no, he decides to kill him and the movie claims there are just two ways to rise in this country, "Crime" or "Politics". And somehow they are trying to portray him as cunning whereas, for the majority of the movie, he was outright stupid.
Feels Disconnected from Reality
The movie is mostly in English but there are many characters who speak in Hindi so why can't a random Rickshaw driver be speaking in Hindi? And everyone speaking in English to a driver from Bihar (one of the last places you will see them speaking English) feels so wrong, especially because the movie is not exclusively English it uses enough Hindi. The local rickshaw driver speaks in English while some of the main characters constantly switch between English and Hindi.
There are a lot of things which you can easily pick up if you are an Indian but will sound completely fine to a foreign audience.
Balram writes this in his mail,
Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion.
These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us, Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India.
Hanuman is worshipped not just because he was devoted to Lord Ram but because he had what seems to be superhuman capabilities and helped in the right cause. Rama hugged Hanuman and said you are one of my brothers. You don't see this in the movie. Is that the master-servant relationship shown in the movie? NO! The masters don't even want to touch their servants.
But again, western audiences will love it, they have seen all this before in Bollywood.
Adarsh Gaurav was the only bright light for me in this movie. Rajkumar Rao's accent sounded very fake. I am a big fan of him, watched him in a lot of movies but I want to forget his performance in this movie.
The weakest part of the plot has to be the ending. It doesn't quite match up to the action. The second half starts to become quite slow in storytelling. There are some unnecessary scenes between Ashok and Balram towards the end.
This might seem like a really bad rant and on issues that may seem unimportant but trust me, I have seen a lot of similar movies and can smell when something is fishy and deliberate. This was very deliberate effort to show a country in a bad light.
My Rating
I would rate it 6/10. Despite all the flaws, the movie is still watchable and enjoyable, especially if you are not familiar with India. For the Indian audience, it would be a real pain except for Adarsh Gaurav's incredible performance as Balram. (I just hope people don't think that is all that India has to offer, Slumdog Millionaire has already done enough harm).
I was reading the reviews on IMDB and saw a clear pattern. Most of the Indian names were giving it a 6 or 7 less rating while the Western audience was claiming it the best movie that came out of India...lol. This just shows they have been flooded with bad Bollywood crap and not enough good movies have reached there.
Thanks for reading!
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