The White Tiger (2020)

I loved this story of class disparity in India, wherein a young man, Balram, works to get out of poverty in the early 2000s––no easy task. The first act is often quite funny. Then our hero says, "...and this is where my story takes a darker turn." Adarsh Gourav leads the cast, aided by Rajkummar Rao as Ashok (a-SHOKE) and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Pinky. Gourav is brilliant, both as the subservient, smiling younger man with shorter hair and in flash-forwards with a ponytail and intense demeanor. Rao's and Jonas's characters are kindly sympathetic, for the most part, in contrast to lots of master-servant mistreatment. There is a disturbing scene near the end.

Full disclosure: Jack found some of it to be on the slow side. I did not.

Ramin Bahrani, an American of Iranian descent, directs and wrote the script, based on the 2008 fiction novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga, with whom Bahrani became friends at Columbia University some thirty years ago.

Gourav has been nominated for Best Actor by the Independent Spirit Awards and Bahrani for Adapted Screenplay by his peers at the Writers Guild. Here's my running list of 2021 selected nominations and wins. Academy Award nominations come out Monday! I'm considering adding the BAFTAs––British Academy of Film and Television Arts––to the list, as both men were nominated there and the awards are considered the British Oscars.

As I type, I'm streaming the wonderful music by Danny Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans with my subscription to Apple Music, and you can also find it on Spotify. There are also plenty of songs. I've always liked Indian music, and this hits the spot, regardless of its authenticity.

The colorful cinematography by Paolo Carnera is also quite wonderful.

Today I watched this video interview with the director and stars, which I suggest you see after the movie.

Bahrani was last blogged for his first feature Man Push Cart (2005), which we watched after his two later ones, and Bensi & Juriaans for scoring The Current War. Gourav is a musician (he sings a pop song with Rao in this movie) who has done some acting in India. Chopra Jonas, like her character, was born in India but schooled elsewhere, and worked on dozens of Indian movies before being cast in some American movies and series. She's one of the producers of The White Tiger. I learned from the interview above that Rao is a big Bollywood star who had to work on his American accent to play Ashok. Carnera is new to me, though he's been shooting in Italy and France for decades.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics aren't blanching, with an average of 92%, while its audiences are slightly paler at  80.

I heartily recommend it, streaming now on Netflix.