The White Tiger – Fantastic or Overrated?

By the messy optimist

I wanted to like it. I so, so, so wanted to like the movie. I LOVE Priyanka Chopra. I love all that she has accomplished – in India and Hollywood. What she has done in Hollywood is f…ing BEYOND an ordinary mortal’s imagination. She has done what’s impossible for the average American born and raised in Los Angeles. And she did it from India.

And TRUST ME. I KNOW.

I didn’t try to make it as an actor (guys…like, come on…look at me!) but my first love has always been film and writing and I tried to make it in Hollywood a very log time back and as you can tell – that didn’t quite work out for me. So. I. KNOW how hard the process is.

So when Priyanka made a few crappy films to begin with and played second fiddle to Claire Danes and Rebel Wilson – I knew that that was the price she had to pay before she got to do the stuff she probably really wanted to do. It’s called pounding the pavement and breaking bricks in Hollywood before you make a dent. And Priyanka is doing it – slowly and steadily.

And then came The White Tiger.

This was Priyanka’s chance to move out of doing those peripheral roles and get into the awards conversation. After all – this was a Man Booker-winning book by Arvind Adiga and not just did Priyanka get to act in it, she was also one of the producers of the film.

Sure. The film belongs to Adarsh Gaurav (what a mind-blowing bravura performance by this incredible young actor!) but both Rajkumar Rao and Priyanka Chopra are BRILLIANT in it as well.

Not to mention – the critical accolades are f…ing POURING in from all over the world. There’s critical acclaim and then there is celebrity acclaim and then there is the regular public’s acclaim.

So…with all this legacy behind it – I should’ve LOVED The White Tiger.

And man…I wanted to. I really, really wanted to.

FYI – I’m not one of those Nagging Nellies who constantly find fault in something only to show off that they can.

Again – I wanted to. I really, really wanted to.

But fact is that I didn’t.

I’m trying to figure out why. I’ve been reading a few articles here and there about the ‘poverty porn’ that most filmmakers seem to gravitate towards when it comes to portraying life in India. All the images of poverty-stricken India that, apparently, the west is dying to see? Sure. I was a little perturbed by the images in the film but not enough that that was the my reason to not like the movie. Nope. That wasn’t it.

Was it the gross and overwhelming generalization about India as a whole? When Balram Halwai talks about how India is a country of a few privileged masters and the majority of whom are servants – I wanted to say that that maybe true of a certain section of Indian society but definitely – nowhere close to all of India. Nope. That wasn’t it either. I get that it’s a movie and you have to make a statement – an emphatic statement. and the movie does and it’s OK.

I’ve already said above that the performances – throughout – whether it’s the three lead characters or the supporting caste (the actor who plays Rao’s brother, Mongoose = FANTASTIC) – the acting is uniformly brilliant. So, that’s not it either.

I think my concern was with the actual storytelling. The pacing of the narrative just felt off. The first hour of the two hour movie was fantastic, The backstory of Halwai and his motivation in the present – the movie moves along in a brisk pace. It was after the first hour that I started to feel a little itchy. I wanted something to change. Especially, since a little bit of the suspense about what happens to Halwai is lost because we see the newer and changed version of Halwai at the very beginning. Btw…wrong move. I feel like we needed to NOT see what Halwai becomes at the beginning. A bit of the ‘will he, won’t he’ was lost for me because I knew ‘he will’.

So – given I knew that Halwai is not someone who will settle for being just a servant to his master – that change doesn’t come through till literally the last ten minutes of the movie. I remember clearly – an hour and 45 minutes in – Halwai was still ass-kissing his master and given I knew the movie was two hours long – I wanted to see that palpable change in him. 90 minutes in – I was really antsy and started to watch the movie and look at my Instagram feed. Because it was just more and more and more of the same damn thing. THAT bothered me.

SPOILER ALERT – STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW THE MOVIE ENDS

Also, I never really understood Halwai’s final heinous act? What was the need? He did not need to kill Rao at the end to get the money. He could just as well have stolen the money and run-off to Bangalore. If the police couldn’t find him after killing someone – why would they find him after just stealing some money? It made NO sense whatsoever.

And yes – like he says – it would’ve made more sense and given us – the audience – so much more satisfaction had he killed the Mongoose instead of Rao. So – not just was the fact that Halwai’s change in character comes way too late in the film, it comes as a result of an act that was completely unnecessary AND he kills the wrong guy. I did NOT want to feel bad for Rao’s character at the end but I did. And that should NOT have happened in a film that essentially needs us to ‘feel’ for Halwai and just Halwai.

My biggest issue with the movie was that this was character-based story and as long as it stayed with the sketching of the characters – it worked. From Halwai to Pinky madam to Ashok Sir to the Mongoose to the Stork to even the tiny scene-stealing role of the corrupt politician The Great Socialist that yesteryear actress Swaroop Sampat plays – the movie is brimming with amazing characters. And had Bahrani left the movie as a character study – it would’ve worked gangbusters. It’s when Bahrani introduces a half-baked plot into this amazing character sketches that the movie goes nowhere. In Hindi there’s a saying, “Dhobi ka kutta – na ghar ka, na ghat ka” – meaning something to the effect that, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” – and this syndrome is what The White Tiger suffers from and fails at the end.

So – NO. As much as I hope that Priyanka and Rao and Gaurav nab every award out there or at least get nominated and I’d be thrilled if the movie got nominated as well – it definitely was not one of my favorites.

The White Tiger was a solid movie but not fantastic.

The tragedy is that it could’ve been fantastic.