Film - White Tiger
In a society where you are conditioned to believe you will never be anything other than a servant and the height of success is being able to wear clean clothes for your job, Balram is learning about alternatives.
Based on the Booker prize-winning novel from 2008, White Tiger highlights the much-told story of inequality in the Indian cast system where there are those with big bellies and those with small bellies. Whereas everybody else fears the man who rules over the village turning up with his henchmen to demand rent they can ill afford, Balram grovels in order to find employment with the Man.
Balram wants to be like his hero, the boss’ son who, having just come back from the US with his Indo-American wife, takes an interest in his new driver from the wrong side of the tracks. References are forgone in this recruitment process. The element of trust between the wealthy and their poor servants exists only because of the fear of what the overlords will do to the families of the forgotten poor if they break even a simple rule. There is a strange mix of respect, fear and hatred of the wealthy family he works for.
We watch Balram learn basic hygiene practices that he’s never needed to know about in the tiny village community he has left behind although has to send his wages back to his demanding Grandmother. It’s quite lovely to discover a world of restaurants, hotels and big cities through Balram’s eyes. He resented being taken out of school at a young age to work and is learning about the world first hand as an adult.
White Tiger is unnecessarily long and goes into details on areas it doesn’t need to and there is the overacting from the boss’s wife who seems shocked at everything despite repeatedly witnessing the same behaviour on a daily basis. The trailer uses Queen’s I Want To Break Free which I do not remember in the film.
The film is told from the point when Balram is an entrepreneur and an employer himself. The only question is how did he get from being dirt poor to being powerful?
6½/10