Ramin Bahrani’s class satire is sharp, darkly funny and carried by Adarsh Gourav’s absorbing performance. The middle takes too long to make its points, but the humiliations of service give its anger weight.
Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger, adapted from Aravind Adiga’s novel, is a good, bitterly funny account of ambition that pays close attention to the effort of obeying other people. Balram Halwai wants to escape poverty, and the film understands how much obedience can survive in someone determined to get away. Its anger grows from differences in power that the people benefiting from them scarcely notice. The telling is less disciplined, with a crowded middle and narration that sometimes does the actors’ work for them.
Adarsh Gourav is the reason to stay with it. As Balram Halwai, he makes eagerness, resentment and calculation seem possible at the same moment, without asking us to decide which is the real man. We winced at the employers’ condescending kindness. His performance makes receiving it seem like hard work, because gratitude has to be convincing to the person who expects it. That effort makes the film’s account of servitude uncomfortable to watch.
Rajkummar Rao’s Ashok and Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s Pinky Madam are important to that discomfort. Their performances allow the privileged people around Balram to believe in their own decency, which is more convincing than having everyone announce their wickedness. The film notices how easily concern for a servant can coexist with an assumption that he will remain a servant. This gives the lead something difficult to respond to, and the supporting performances leave space for his uncertainty.
Paolo Carnera’s cinematography supplies some of the restlessness that the narration labours to describe. The sharp framing keeps differences in status legible, while the increasingly grim treatment stops ambition from looking comfortably heroic. Chad Keith’s production design contributes to that clarity: the unequal circumstances register without needing a speech to explain them. The images are persuasive enough that the script’s insistence on explaining their significance becomes a recurring irritation.
Tim Streeto and Ramin Bahrani’s editing gives the earlier stretches an encouraging briskness, carrying a considerable amount of explanation without immediately making it feel burdensome. The music by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi helps sustain that unease. The rap-heavy soundtrack also gives the pursuit of wealth a useful swagger, making its attraction easier to understand. These choices keep the film lively even when the writing begins to repeat itself, although they cannot entirely disguise the middle’s loss of momentum.
The narration is the main difficulty. Its wit belongs to the film, and losing it altogether would take away some of the pleasure of spending time with this particular storyteller. But it too often tells us how to understand behaviour that the performances have already made clear. Once the psychological demands of service are established, further explanation adds length without much discovery. Across 125 minutes, that repetition matters, especially when the crowded storytelling makes the central struggle harder to follow than it needs to be.
As a crime drama about getting ahead, the film is unusually interested in the obedience that ambition must overcome. It does not require us to find its central character admirable before taking his predicament seriously. That willingness keeps the satire uncomfortable even when the storytelling becomes cumbersome. Give it an evening for Adarsh Gourav, with some patience for explanations his performance does not need.
