"America is so yesterday," announces ambitious anti-hero Balram (Adarsh Gourav), moments into The White Tiger. "In the belief that the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man... I offer to tell you the truth about India, by telling you the story of my life."
So begins director Ramin Bahrani's scathing, often very funny 21st-century rags-to-riches saga, a compressed but compelling adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 Booker Prize-winning bestseller that casts a satirical eye over class, colonialism, and — not insignificantly — the darker sides of globalisation and Silicon Valley aspiration.
That it's streaming on global content factory Netflix only sweetens the sting in the tale.
Like the novel, the film is framed in an extended flashback that gives the story its wry, slippery perspective. It's Bangalore, 2010, and Balram, a self-made entrepreneur in a slicked back ponytail and curlicue moustache, is writing an email of his life story to the visiting Chinese premier, with a view to flattering him into a business relationship. ("I know you Chinese are great lovers of freedom and individual liberty," he cracks.)
As Balram recounts his rise from poverty, the film condenses chapters of Adiga's novel into a speedy but effective opening section, zipping across Balram's childhood and youth in the impoverished slums of Laxmangarh, where, as he tells us in one of the story's Dickensian flourishes, he was born into "the Darkness".
Dubbed a once-in-a-generation 'white tiger' by a teacher, but lacking the resources to escape his low caste, Balram buries his sense of exceptionalism and determines to better his station through servitude — to escape what he calls, in the story's running metaphor, the rooster coop, an ingrained mentality that keeps the lower classes willfully locked in a cycle of poverty.
Spying a way out, he gets a job as the driver to Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), the wealthy, Western-leaning son of one of the local landlords, and his American-raised wife, Pinky — played with snappy, progressive disobedience by Indian superstar Priyanka Chopra, who also serves as an executive producer.
It's his first step into another world; one that he quickly sizes up for the taking.
The White Tiger is slick and punchy, juggling a lot of story without sacrificing too much of its essential detail; effectively building tension as Balram watches and learns, graciously enduring the indignity of his employment as he gains the personal trust of his masters.
Iranian-American filmmaker Bahrani (Chop Shop, 99 Homes), who also adapted the screenplay, has a knack for the visual shorthand of class division, from the poverty-riddled backstreets and servants' subterranean quarters to the crass, nouveau riche decor of Delhi's modern apartments and hotels, while Balram's theatrically-embellished commentary sprinkles the film with giddy, escalating unease.
As Balram says in his opening gambit, he's "straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, all at the same time".
This knowing, mischievous perspective is hard-wired into the film, from the cheesy, 'You might be wondering how I got here' freeze frame that opens the film — a cliche so ancient it's practically funny again — to the winking asides presumably levelled at Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire: "I was trapped," says Balram at one point, "and don't believe for a second there's a million-rupee game show you can win to get out of it."
It's a film that knows its terrain and its aesthetic contradictions, whether it's invoking the glossy, prestige look beloved of big-tech streaming-services, or bouncing along to a global soundtrack of new-millennium pop, from Jay-Z's remix of Panjabi MC's Mundian To Bach Ke to Gorillaz's Feel Good Inc — precisely the kind of mid-aughts smash that a rich landowner's son and a poor kid might conspiratorially bond to over the radio.
Though the story is laced with violence and tragedy, there's something satisfying about watching Balram's ascendance, just as the minting of a mafia don holds its perverse appeal, and Gourav's performance — buoyed by his voiceover, allowing his humility to simmer into anger and cunning — gives scope and complication to his resentment, and justification to his rage.
Like the driver in Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, he's another social-climbing symptom of a wealth divide that drives an underclass to desperation.
"For the poor, there are only two ways to get to the top, crime or politics," he explains to the Chinese premier, before adding a question that may as well be directed toward the audience: "Is it like that in your country too?"
It's this thrill of revolt, of beating a crooked system at its own game, that gives The White Tiger its kick, one that powers a funny, if grimly cyclical finale. The old world may be dead, but there are always new masters to serve.
Loading...
The White Tiger is in cinemas from January 21 and on Netflix from January 22.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTAxLTIxL3RoZS13aGl0ZS10aWdlci1yZXZpZXctbmV0ZmxpeC1hZGFwdGF0aW9uLWFyYXZpbmQtYWRpZ2Etbm92ZWwvMTMwNzIzNzbSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTMwNzIzNzY?oc=5
2021-01-20 20:21:00Z
52781318640361
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar