Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Quick Impressions:
The day the BAFTA nominations were announced, I skimmed various posts covering the topic on my phone while sitting in on my son’s kindergarten class. Because I’ve been more out of it than usual in this oddest of awards seasons, I had never heard of The White Tiger. Half paying attention, I read some entertainment blogger’s brief synopsis of the film and learned it was about a Russian soldier with PTSD, monomaniacally obsessed with a phantom tank, The White Tiger, which attacked in times of great stress.
When the film was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, I decided to watch it and noticed the largely Indian cast. “Which war is this about, exactly?” I kept wondering. I’ve been busy and distracted, so I’ve never given this my full attention. It’s just been kicking around in the back of my mind. Given its screenplay nod, the film sounded like a mashup of Moby Dick, Slaughterhouse-Five, and possibly Life of Pi.
Then I saw the Netflix synopsis just before we started watching and felt really confused. I kept asking myself (and my husband, who didn’t know), “So where does the tank fit in?” Yeah, there is no tank. The synopsis I read earlier actually describes a totally different film, a film that didn’t seem to exist when I began searching the internet for it last night. (For a while, I was raving, “I swear I read this! I know there’s a tank!” And then I started to think, “Am I the one imagining this tank?”) I couldn’t find the original post I’d read, but I did finally discover the other White Tiger on Amazon. (I couldn’t find it elsewhere because Amazon lists its release date as 2021, which appears to be an accidental transposition of the actual release date, 2012.)
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but although The White Tiger is actually an adaptation of a best-selling novel by Aravind Adiga about an Indian man who breaks free from a crippling, demoralizing class system to become master of his own destiny, the other White Tiger does exist, and at least one media outlet (or maybe an entertainment blogger) did confuse the two films the day BAFTA nominations were announced. You are not losing your mind.
So I discovered I was in for a pleasant surprise last night. I would have watched the phantom Russian tank, too, but the story of a man’s morally complicated rise to power (or escape from powerlessness) is more my kind of thing (especially because our narrator/protagonist ends up in Bangalore, the home of a number of my husband’s co-workers). It’s a good movie, and I’ll probably read Adiga’s novel now (a pattern of mine lately. I lazily discover new popular fiction for adults by watching film adaptations with awards buzz. Thanks to Covid-19, this has replaced my previous lazy method of grabbing books on display at the public library as my son hurried past them, making an eager beeline to the children’s room.)
The Good:
This film kept me in a constant state of high stress the whole time I was watching. I could so identify with Balram (Adarsh Gourav), the story’s narrator and protagonist. I’ve never faced circumstances as adverse as his (although an argument can be made that his rooster coop analogy applies to most people’s lives), and I’ve never considered acts as extreme as the crimes he eventually carries out, but I’m totally familiar with having a running dialogue with myself inside my head as I question my every move in a high stress situation. (For me, life in general is a high stress situation. For some reason, even watching this movie was a high stress situation.)
What I find fun (if you want to call it that) about The White Tiger are the moral dilemmas that pop up regularly. We’re being invited to consider them, each in turn. Balram wants us to think about them because he certainly has. Without spoilers, I can say only that I find his entirely intentional break with conventional morality fascinating. He must do what feels wrong because he comes to believe that he has been conditioned to live in a system that has failed him on every level. The moral code he has learned is part of an elaborate, centuries-old order designed deliberately to oppress him. Though we may not agree with all of Balram’s choices, we can certainly see why he believes he must do what is counterintuitive, and, indeed, instinctually repugnant. He cannot trust his instincts. They were instilled in him for the convenience of those oppressing him.
I often think about our own country’s long struggles with racial inequality. (I mean, don’t we all! ) This nation was built by people who made their reputations on the concept of freedom and their fortunes from the labor of slaves. And despite what we pretend, we’ve also had a longstanding problem with a class divide that just keeps getting wider. I’m familiar with how these issues continue to play out in the United States. But I don’t often give much thought to the vestiges of the caste system in India, so The White Tiger provided me with a novel way of considering familiar issues.
Going in, I was totally unfamiliar with Adarsh Gourav, but I really enjoyed his performance as Balram, a role that calls for both nuance and versatility. It’s almost like Gourav is playing two characters since the Balram narrating for us has changed so much since the beginning of his story. Even within the story that he tells, Balram is a complex, multi-faceted figure. By necessity, he’s repressed beyond belief, outwardly compliant, even servile in his quest for a better life, while inwardly he fumes, rages, schemes, and seemingly dissociates from his own vicious acts as a defense mechanism that allows him to continue striving for a better quality of life. Balram does some terrible things. Weirdly, it is his very viciousness that makes him most sympathetic. (I say weirdly because this realization made me uncomfortable. We would not like Balram as much as if he always made the conventionally moral choice and faded into obscurity like everyone else. He’s right that part of what makes his story worth telling is that he’s made himself exceptional. There’s something so uncomfortable about that. I think most of the movie’s tension arises from our growing realization that Balram is not exactly a good guy, and yet we are rooting for him. If he were a good person, we probably never would have discovered him. Isn’t that unnerving? It bothered me.)
The other characters are quite interesting, too, though not as interesting as Balram. As human beings go, they’re a pretty disappointing lot. Pinky Madam appears to be oriented toward good, but is she really? After a while, I started to think that she merely seems sympathetic because she expresses views most in line with our own. But is that because she’s virtuous, or simply because she’s American (and so her ideas are familiar and comfortable to us)? In the end, I find her less bad than most other people in the story, largely because she has convictions and attempts to follow them, and when she can’t, she just leaves. There’s something to be said for that. Priyanka Chopra Jonas is much easier to like than the character she plays. She’s very good in the part, and I was excited to see her in an actual film role because she’s been on my mind ever since she and her husband announced the Oscar nominees.
I also liked Kamlesh Gill as Balram’s overbearing grandmother. I could never decide how I should feel about the grandmother, but the actress is extremely convincing in the role.
By far the most disappointing character is Rajkummar Rao’s Ashok. (There’s nothing wrong with Rao’s performance. The character just drives me crazy!) I found Ashok extremely easy to despise because he has absolutely no courage and stands for nothing. If Ashok had Balram’s virtues, then Balram wouldn’t need to cultivate such vices. Even Ashok’s unjust brother and father (well played by Vijay Maurya and Mahesh Manjrekar) have more going for them than Ashok. Though their actions and views on their servants often seem repugnant from my point of view, at least there’s an internal consistency governing their behavior. They have a world view, and there’s a certain logic to their horrific way of treating their servants. What is Ashok even doing? He doesn’t know. If he had even half of Balram’s pluck and vision, he would be governing India, helping to shape the nation in a positive way. Instead he just drifts around being useless. (That sounds pretty harsh, but the character frustrated me so much. I kept remembering how pleasantly the past Best Picture winner Mrs. Miniver surprised me last summer. In that film, the upper classes decide to wake up and show some grace and gravitas, leading by example, providing true leadership, reaching down to lift others up. Ashok says he wants to take charge and create positive change in India. He says a lot of things. He also thinks he sings like a rock star.)
Ashok’s failings made me consider his situation. He’s Indian, but he’s been educated in America. He feels like a stranger in his own country. He doesn’t want to do things the old way, but he doesn’t seem to know how to implement change. I’m eager to read the novel now and see if it elaborates on these themes because Ashok’s frustrating character and his tricky situation fascinate me. I’d like to understand him better. I’m sure he’s representative of issues faced by a number of Indians educated abroad.
I’d also love to get a better read on Balram who makes a convincing case that the oppressive system he grew up in has failed him, but also sets off all kinds of alarms for me. (I mean, are we sure he’s not just a sociopath? Every time he does something grievously wrong, he has a great excuse, blaming the system for instilling vice in him and only allowing him to flourish if he does evil things, but I mean…Is he the most reliable narrator? What he does to the first driver is genuinely terrible, and his insistence that he felt bad about it comes across as just a lot of performative posturing, in the same way that he exaggerates his piety to compete with that driver in prayer. Personally, I think what he does to the first driver is worse than anything else that he does in the entire movie. It’s quite indicative of his character.
The second big thing that he does (the one involving the car that night) is also pretty indicative of bad character. (It’s messier, though, obviously, because he’s also genuinely being a loyal servant here, and his society has drilled such behavior into his head. I buy that. I even get it.) (But I mean, Pinky Madam feels that she owes him an apology. Can we be sure that he doesn’t owe an apology to her? Remember her first instinct and how he quashes it.) I don’t really trust Balram. Ever. I think his admitted tendency to dissociate into servile posturing has caused him to dissociate in general. Cognitive dissonance is his oxygen. He pretends that every bad thing that he does is necessary and then just kind of slips out of it later like it’s uncomfortable clothing. This idea of getting out of the rooster coop sounds a little too much like Raskolnikov axing the pawnbroker to prove his superiority to me.
Weirdly, I almost approve of the last wrong thing he does. This one is the most obviously criminal, but I think it’s hurting the fewest people and might even prove to be genuinely helpful to society in the long run since Balram is willing to act on good ideas.
But I suppose that’s what I like best about The White Tiger. It pretends to be a drama about class struggle, but it’s actually an emotionally intense story about a sociopath. Balram didn’t invent the concept of becoming “superior” to break free of the bonds of society, after all. That’s already a thing. So the movie presents us with an interesting problem. He’s right; he has been living in a kind of prison, and his society is unjust. But I’m not so sure that excuses his behavior. I understand that he can’t afford morals, and I see that he has more courage to make genuine reform than any of his “betters,” but you know, he’s the one telling us this story, and he lies constantly. Plus, the big, defiant act Balram makes in the end is not exactly the same as Huck Finn deciding to damn himself to help Jim. Balram’s society might have taught him to act against his own interests, and that is evil. But that doesn’t mean that any act he undertakes in service of his own interests suddenly becomes good.
At any rate, the movie offers fascinating food for thought and genuinely engaging moral dilemmas. It reminds me a bit of The Godfather.
Best Scene:
BAFTA nominated Gourav for Best Actor, and his performance is certainly deserving of acclaim, especially in the scene in which he signs the paper. I love his behavior here, how we see the anguish, confusion, realization, and fear on his face even as he narrates bewilderment that will soon give way to rage.
Best Scene Visually:
One of The White Tiger’s strengths is how pointedly it shows us the difference between the way the rich live, and the way the poor live. I love the way that Balram’s servants’ quarters in the parking garage of the hotel seem to become increasingly awful each time we go there.
Best Action Sequence:
The second time we see the opening scene in the car, we get to the heart of the movie.
The Negatives:
I can’t decide if what I’ve said about Balram is fair. I’m having qualms. (The problem is, he has given me ample reasons not to trust him as a narrator.) What is done to him is horrible. No one is going to rescue him, so he must rescue himself. (Certainly a phantom Russian tank won’t be coming to save him!) The story is kind of like Life of Pi in that way. Balram must become a tiger to protect himself. Maybe I’m being too hard on him (like everyone else in the movie always is). In fairness, once he himself feels more secure, he does attempt to do good things (or so he tells us. Since he’s the narrator, we have to believe him).
What I don’t like about the film is its implication that the way to succeed is to become as corrupt as the oppressor. I’m simply not sure that’s true. For one thing, is hurting others success? Is it? (The family Balram works for isn’t even all that successful! They keep bribing all the wrong people, and they clearly don’t know how to instill loyalty in their servants! They’re a mess!)
It is true enough that if you oppress people long enough, they will eventually learn your cruelty, rise up, and eat you.
Perhaps that’s what bothers me most about The White Tiger. I can tell it’s a movie with a message, but I’m not completely sure what the message is. (Is it, “Watch out for Balram!”?) But that’s also what I like most about the film. Whatever its faults, this is an extremely compelling story, and a fairly complex one, too, making appeals, as it does, to both our intellect and our emotions.
I want more closure with the story of Pinky Madam, but that’s probably mostly because I enjoyed watching Chopra Jonas. I keep seeing her name and face everywhere, so it’s nice to see her at work to get an idea of what she’s like as an actress.
Overall:
The White Tiger certainly presents a different picture of upward mobility in India than Slumdog Millionaire (and it will be the first to tell you so!). BAFTA-nominated Adarsh Gourav makes a compelling (if morally perplexing) lead in an always engrossing story about how to break free from the stranglehold of an unjust society. I’m not sure that the solution Balram settles on is any more just, but you certainly can’t accuse him of being a boring protagonist. At least, his story held my attention. I’ll probably read the book.