At one point in the film our hero, (or anti-hero—whichever way you decide to look at him) talks about why it's so difficult for a man to win his freedom in India. The reason he feels is the “rooster coop”—“the greatest thing to come out of this country in its 10,000-year history.” The hens and roosters forced into wire-mesh cages can “see and smell the blood, they know they are next and yet they don’t rebel. They don’t try and get out of the coop. The servants here are raised to behave the same way.”
The film, essentially a scathing commentary on the caste and class biases that run deep across the country, focuses on the relationship between a servant Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) and his master Ashoke (Rajkumar Rao) and how the former succeeds in breaking the coop, a phenomenon as rare as the sighting of a White Tiger!
Man Booker Prize-winning book The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is dedicated to Ramin Bahrani who has now directed the screen adaptation. Films based on books fundamentally encounter two distinct challenges: One, how do you encapsulate all that is written and compress it without compromising on the essence? So, what one includes and what is edited out are of equal importance. Secondly, reading is a more intimate exercise where one lets one's imagination run wild and visualise a particular character or incident but while watching a film one has no choice but to surrender to the vision of the makers. Now, irrespective of whether you have read the book or not, one would want the film as a whole to hold our attention and engage us.
The film opens in Delhi 2007. Three people are in a car driving rashly around the city. There is a strong hint that some thing dramatic will happen but just then we jump to Bangalore 2010 and meet our narrator. The events are introduced to us in a fantastical fashion. Here is a man writing a letter to the Chinese Premier introducing himself as a celebrated entrepreneur who once was a servant. He offers to tell him the truth about India by recounting his own life story. The narrative then takes us to his childhood. Son of a rickshaw-puller, growing up in abject poverty, the life of servitude he is forced into.
Like in the book, in the film too a lot of animal imagery is used as a metaphor to suggest how the world is a jungle and the hunter is always on the lookout for his next prey. An indictment of the socio-economic order where the systemic violence is perpetuated to keep the power balance skewed in favour of one section of society.
Balram, the almost invisible “servant” always at the beck and call of his masters carries the trauma of servitude from childhood. While this kind of “rags to riches story “ story depicting the chasm between the rich and poor and how the insurmountable gap isn’t new, Bahrani’s hold on the narrative and Paolo Carnera‘s vibrant camera infuse the narrative with an energy that keeps the proceedings buoyant.
Adarsh Gourav is faultless as the lead capturing his character‘s agony and triumph with stunning deceptive ease.
His is also the voice that keeps us company through the film as the narrator and yet it never feels like we have had too much of it. His words and actions all come from an honest, authentic space.
Then there is his master Ashoke (Rajkummar Rao) who has returned from the US with his wife Pinky and wants to be part of the booming IT sector. From Quantico to now, we desi audiences have become accustomed to Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ “accent”, but it is Rajkummar Rao’s tone and all the effort he puts into pronouncing words with the desired slant like “half” or “can’t” that appear so forced and out of place. The character might justify the need for an accent while speaking English but all the labour that he puts in shows and that ultimately is a huge turnoff. Mahesh Manjrekar and Vijay Maurya have limited screen time and their lines marinated in wholesome Hindi abuses in contrast appear more authentic.
The film has a run time of around two hours and yet in portions one can’t help but feel like it’s stretched. Balram breaking the coop and carving out a life of his dreams is exhilarating to watch and still because the storytelling was so rushed one never quite manages to invest emotionally. It feels like the makers came with a checklist of things to include and depict. With clinical precision everything flows as per plan and yet one remains distant and unaffected. It’s this disconnect that ultimately proves to be its undoing. 3 Quints out of 5 !
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