• Latest
  • Trending
  • All
  • News
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Lifestyle
Movie Review: “White Tiger” wittily explodes India’s caste system

Movie Review: “White Tiger” wittily explodes India’s caste system

April 9, 2021
Biden to meet Museveni despite opposition calls to uninvite him

America’s Biden promises tough penalties to Uganda for allowing Anti-Gay Law

May 29, 2023
UPDF commanders sending their relatives, cooks to Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, says Museveni

UPDF commanders sending their relatives, cooks to Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, says Museveni

May 29, 2023

Alcoholism and reckless behaviour major causes of shootings, says Police

May 29, 2023
Deputy Speaker Among asks public to support security agencies in wake of bomb blasts

Speaker Among becomes first victim as US gov’t revokes her visa over anti-homosexuality law

May 29, 2023
Spitting in public is now criminal as Museveni signs five other bills

Spitting in public is now criminal as Museveni signs five other bills

May 29, 2023
Over 2,500 participate in maiden Absa KH3 – 7 Hills run

Over 2,500 participate in maiden Absa KH3 – 7 Hills run

May 29, 2023
Aviation authority tips public relations practitioners on managing crises

Aviation authority tips public relations practitioners on managing crises

May 29, 2023

Police officer on the run after shooting businessman he suspected of eloping with his wife

May 29, 2023
Ministry of Agriculture registers growth, success towards increasing employment, household incomes

Ministry of Agriculture registers growth, success towards increasing employment, household incomes

May 29, 2023
Museveni warns MPs against using own money to solve their constituents problems 

Museveni warns MPs against using own money to solve their constituents problems 

May 29, 2023
Logo
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • 2021 Elections Watch
      • The Election Podcast
    • Exclusive
    • Investigations
  • Education
  • Security
    • Cyber Security
  • Health
    • Coronavirus outbreak
  • Opinions
    • Columns
      • Parting Shot
      • Two Sides of a Coin
      • Bazanye’s Quick Shots
      • Mable Twegumye Zake’s #BitsOfMe&You
      • But this Year!
      • What Did I Miss?
  • Lifestyle
    • Hatmahz Kitchen
    • Food Hub
    • Let’s Talk About Sex
    • Entertainment
    • Tour & Travel
    • Love Therapist
    • Homes
  • Global
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • The Americas
  • East Africa
    • Kenya
    • Rwanda
    • Tanzania
    • South Sudan
    • DR Congo
    • Ethiopia
    • Sudan
  • Technology
  • Ask the Mechanic
  • Special Reports
    • Kabaka Mutebi’s 25th Coronation Series
    • Focus on Somalia
    • Sino-Africa
    • Uganda at 56
    • Anti-Corruption Fight
    • Age Limit Map
    • Tuve Ku Kaveera
  • Sports
    • Place-It
    • StarTimes Uganda Premier League
    • Bundesliga
    • World Cup
  • Jobs
No Result
View All Result
Logo
No Result
View All Result
Home Reviews

Movie Review: “White Tiger” wittily explodes India’s caste system

This movie takes you down a path you least expect in an India of light and one of darkness

Philip Matogo by Philip Matogo
April 9, 2021
in Reviews
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
Movie Review: “White Tiger” wittily explodes India’s caste system

“The White Tiger” is a creature which comes along once in a generation to texturize the darkest of moments with the bright splendor of its coat.

It’s also the title of an edge-of-your-seat film adapted from Indian author Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning novel.

Like the novel, the film is filled with socio-political commentary whose narrative arc bends towards the injustices which set apart the haves and have-nots.

Not just in India, although this is where the film is set, but everyplace where a poor person has ever said or thought of saying:

“To think of this again makes me so angry, that I might go out and cut the throat of a rich man right now”.

Those are the words of protagonist Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav).

Balram’s life (and this film) is framed through a letter he’s written to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao who is visiting Bangalore, India, for a tech conference.

The letter straddles the early 2000s, 2007, and 2010 with Balram (also played as a child by Harshit Mahawar) keeping you hooked with his storytelling verve and sing-songy Indian accent.

Balram is a successful pony-tailed entrepreneur with an outlandish hook-mustache which he refuses to twirl as he brags about coming from nothing.

Growing up in the back of beyond rural town of Laxmangarh, his white tigritude is identified as a boy but quickly squashed by an overbearing grandmother who pulls him out of his school, only to land him on his behind working at the family tea shop.

It’s a sweatshop, really. With Himalayas of coal for him to hammer.

Then, his father dies of tuberculosis.

To compound this misfortune, his brother is locked down by an arranged marriage. Thereupon, the lower-caste life becomes the height of his existence.

Balram dreams of rising above his origins, so when he overhears that the village landlord, nicknamed the Stork (Mahesh Manjrekar), is looking for a second driver for his straight-outta USA son Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), Balram seizes his opportunity.

After convincing his grandmother to give him money for driving lessons in exchange for two thirds of his earnings as a driver, he’s eventually hired as a live-in driver at the Stork’s family mansion in Delhi.

Although he spends most of his time lip-locking his new boss’s posteriors, he has time to regale us with some home-spun wisdom: “Indian is two countries in one. India of light and India of darkness”.

The darkness, of course, is reserved for the likes of Balram who not only drives Ashok but also does every imaginable chore as he slaves away under the thumbs of his oppressive masters.

Then, just when you expect him explode with righteous indignation, he instead does an Indian head bobble and asks to work for a fraction of the starvation wags he receives!

Is this guy for real?

We see how thousands of years of a remorseless caste system has ingrained in him an inferiority complex which is nauseating.

Ashok and his alluring wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) seem to feel for him. But only in the way one would feel for a familiar piece of furniture, not a fellow human being.

Still, Pinky is a feisty ball of energy; all for breaking outmoded master-servant customs which subject Balram and his kind to indentured servitude.

Ashok too seems willing to treat Balram as a man instead of as residue from the dirt under his shoe.

He is so different from his father, The Stork, and his brother The Mongoose (Vijay Maurya).

Or so we thought.

Scene by scene, we see both Pinky and Ashok devolving into the other (milder) cheek on the butt of a rich world that Balram has to smooch in order to get by.

That’s when the switch on the humor is flicked to create a blackness which would leave even Lucifer groping around for the light.

Balram uses the metaphor to explain the caste system as poor Indians being stuck in a “rooster coop.”

They look down from their coops only to see their fate spread out on a lunch counter at KFC or worse, but they sit still and await such a grisly fate with stoic resignation.

They are what philosopher Franz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth, and nobody but nobody can save them from their fate.

Well, so we think.

Until Balram finally writes, “I think we can agree that America is so yesterday … The future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man”, then we realize that even in one’s darkest moments, a white tiger can spring towards the light.

“Straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, all at the same time,” Balram says by way of explaining what it takes for those trapped in lower castes to escape the rooster’s coop.

By this time, his soul seems dead but his spirit very alive to what it takes to thrive in a dog-eat-tiger world.

As the film ends, expect Balram to break the fourth wall by looking into the camera to explain the preceding two hours of a very watchable movie.

You’ll enjoy the music and the relentless pacing of the film.

The tonality of the film’s message is dyed by a dark humor tinged with a lightness of touch reminding us that even when we’re trapped on a mouse wheel, we can still become top cats.

 

Tags: caste systemIndiaindia caste systemmovie reviewreviewthe white tiger
ShareTweetSend
Previous Post

Book Review: Banana Republic, a tale of torture 

Next Post

Onyango demands shs100m from two betting companies over illegal use of his photos

Philip Matogo

Philip Matogo

Related Posts

MOVIE REVIEW: Luckiest Girl Alive; the book was great, but the movie could have been a lot more

MOVIE REVIEW: Luckiest Girl Alive; the book was great, but the movie could have been a lot more

by Catherine Katabazi
October 14, 2022
0

Mila Kunis stars as women’s magazine editor Ani FaNelli, who seems to have the perfect Manhattan life in the perfect...

MOVIE REVIEW: Breaking; John Boyega portrays how veterans are treated in America

MOVIE REVIEW: Breaking; John Boyega portrays how veterans are treated in America

by Catherine Katabazi
September 30, 2022
0

Justice ignored is indeed justice denied. What’s more, it’s an open invitation to things easily getting out of hand as...

Movie Review: Beast (2022) is nothing special but it is far from bad

Movie Review: Beast (2022) is nothing special but it is far from bad

by Catherine Katabazi
September 17, 2022
0

First of all, I can’t be the only one who was excited for this movie purposely because of Idris Elba....

Movie Review: Peele’s NOPE movie pushes alien movies into new directions

Movie Review: Peele’s NOPE movie pushes alien movies into new directions

by Catherine Katabazi
September 9, 2022
0

Movie Review: NOPE; a unique take on an alien movie  One thing Jordan Peele will not do is miss! If...

Next Post
Dennis Onyango shortlisted in the CAF player of the year awards

Onyango demands shs100m from two betting companies over illegal use of his photos

ADVERTISEMENT
Plugin Install : Widget Tab Post needs JNews - View Counter to be installed
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Biden to meet Museveni despite opposition calls to uninvite him

America’s Biden promises tough penalties to Uganda for allowing Anti-Gay Law

May 29, 2023
UPDF commanders sending their relatives, cooks to Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, says Museveni

UPDF commanders sending their relatives, cooks to Somalia to fight Al Shabaab, says Museveni

May 29, 2023

Alcoholism and reckless behaviour major causes of shootings, says Police

May 29, 2023
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Careers
Call us: +256-417-720-101
Email: [email protected]

© 2020 Nile Post Uganda Ltd. - A Next Media Services Company.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • 2021 Elections Watch
      • The Election Podcast
    • Exclusive
    • Investigations
  • Education
  • Security
    • Cyber Security
  • Health
    • Coronavirus outbreak
  • Opinions
    • Columns
      • Parting Shot
      • Two Sides of a Coin
      • Bazanye’s Quick Shots
      • Mable Twegumye Zake’s #BitsOfMe&You
      • But this Year!
      • What Did I Miss?
  • Lifestyle
    • Hatmahz Kitchen
    • Food Hub
    • Let’s Talk About Sex
    • Entertainment
    • Tour & Travel
    • Love Therapist
    • Homes
  • Global
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • The Americas
  • East Africa
    • Kenya
    • Rwanda
    • Tanzania
    • South Sudan
    • DR Congo
    • Ethiopia
    • Sudan
  • Technology
  • Ask the Mechanic
  • Special Reports
    • Kabaka Mutebi’s 25th Coronation Series
    • Focus on Somalia
    • Sino-Africa
    • Uganda at 56
    • Anti-Corruption Fight
    • Age Limit Map
    • Tuve Ku Kaveera
  • Sports
    • Place-It
    • StarTimes Uganda Premier League
    • Bundesliga
    • World Cup
  • Jobs

© 2020 Nile Post Uganda Ltd. - A Next Media Services Company.