The novelist Milan Kundera once described the art of the novel as an explication of the cages in which human beings spend their lives. Some of these cages are made by society or destiny or, even, embraced by their occupants -- but they are all cages of one sort or another. Ramen Bahrani's film The White Tiger (2020 Netflix) explores this subject with unblinking intensity. And, in fact, the film's theme is announced by a striking image: in Indian markets, roosters are kept in cages where they can survey the site where they will be butchered. The film's picaresque hero, Balram, describes these rooster cages and the film shows the animals stacked up in iron barred boxes awaiting slaughter, noting that the birds don't seem to mind their imprisonment and that they probably wouldn't try to escape if they could. This dispiriting concept is at the film's heart, an ambitious epic-proportioned movie that portrays for us the chaotic corruption endemic to India, ironically called (several times) "the world's largest democracy." The film is excellent and should be seen. At the end of the movie, Balram, the Dickensian hero (a sort of brown David Copperfield) has become an entrepreneur and a successful man. The film's narrative purports to be Balram's account of his life written for the benefit of the Chinese prime minister who has planned a trip to India to promote trade. Balram proclaims that "White people are on their way out. It's the century of the brown and yellow people. God help the others." Upon briefly encountering the film's hero, the Chinese leader is a little nonplussed by Balram's assertion, but he doesn't dispute it.
In elementary school, Balram distinguishes himself, praising the so-called "Great Socialist", a woman (probably Indira Gandhi) who leads the nation. The teacher, recognizing Balram's potential, procures a scholarship for him to an excellent private school, declaring that he is the prodigy of the "white tiger." But Balram's education is thwarted -- his family requires his labor in the tea shop that they operate in their tiny impoverished village and, after only two years of school, the lad is forced to work breaking up coal for fuel in the shop. His large family is tyrannized by an elderly grandmother who forces everyone to work for her benefit and for the good of the kin, compelling all to pay their wages into a common fund (of which she is the chief beneficiary).The despotism in the family is mirrored in the larger society. The people in the village tithe to a vicious landlord nicknamed the Stork and his eldest son, the Mongoose, beats people up who don't pay their share to the feudal master. Balram's father, a rickshaw puller, is thrashed by the mongoose for not paying enough to the Landlord's family and, later, dies miserably of tuberculosis -- the town has no doctors. When Balram sees his father's corpse burned, he observes the poor man's toes and feet writhing in the flame, a sign that even in death his father's misery continues.
Balram is ambitious and he finagles a job as a driver for the Stork. (First, he has to learn how to drive, a sort of bloodsport apparently in India in which each driver bullies every other driver on the crowded roads). Balram figures out that the other servant and driver is a Muslim. He informs on the man to the Stork and the poor fellow loses his job. (It's hard to be sympathetic to the Muslim, however -- in Bahrani's film everyone oppresses everyone else mercilessly; the Muslim bullies Balram viciously until the youth sees the man surreptitiously observing Ramadan and can get him fired.) Balram is obsequious and gains the trust of his employers. Their world is feudal and Balram is just a serf -- people beat him up and claim that peasants like to be thrashed. But Balram insinuates himself into the family's business, a squalid enterprise that involves bribery of officials in Delhi. (It is assumed that no one pays taxes in India -- everything is an enormous protection racket.) In fact, the Mongoose delivers red valises full of cash to government employees up to, and including, the nasty "Great Socialist" herself, who is thoroughly and viciously corrupt. Ashok, the youngest son in the Stork's family, has returned to India from New York City with his wife, Pinky Madam (as she is called), the daughter of an Indian family emigrated to Jackson Heights. Pinky Madam fancies herself liberal and progressive and she has a degree as a chiropractor. Ashok and Pinky Madam pretend to be Balram's friend and benefactor but their declarations of brotherhood ring hollow. One night, Pinky Madam is driving the family SUV in Delhi when she runs over a little kid crossing the street in a slum. Pinky is drunk and Balam, recognizing the peril, counsels them to flee the scene. The next morning, Balram is gladhanded by the family and handed a confession written by the Stork's lawyer -- Balram agrees that he was responsible for the hit and run collision and that it was solely his fault. Balram signs the confession without asking anything in return. (In fact, there is always implicit a threat that Balram's extended family, including the nasty old granny, will be massacred by the Stork's henchmen if he isn't compliant with their wishes.) This plot development mirrors a similar situation in Nuri Bilge Ceylans' Three Monkeys (2008). Pinky Madam understands that she is now complicit with the horrible Indian caste system and leaves her husband, returning to New York. (She gives Balram an envelope full of cash -- a rich reward until we learn later that the amount of cash provided, a King's ransom to Balram, would not suffice to pay for a single night at the luxury hotel in Delhi where the family lives when they are not extorting cash from their serfs back at their posh estate in the country.) Balram understands that he is nothing more than a tool in the hands of the Stork and his erstwhile friend, Ashok. So Balram begins stealing money from the family and plots a way to escape from their clutches. Ultimately, he murders Ashok, gouging out his throat with a broken whiskey bottle, and flees town with a red suitcase full of bribe money. (It is seldom in film that the audience feels that a savage murder is so well-merited by its victim -- Balam's only regret is that he couldn't kill the brutal Mongoose as well.) By this time, Balam has the care of a small boy from his family, apparently a nephew sent to live with him in Delhi. Balram travels to Bangalore where the economy is booming -- everyone is outsourcing work to India. There he founds a cab company called "The White Tiger Drivers", after bribing officials to put out of business his competitors (whose licenses to drive have expired). When he was in school, his teacher proclaimed Balram to be gifted, a so-called "white tiger", a marvel that arises in the jungle once every generation. Before killing Ashok, Balram has taken his nephew to the zoo and sees a white tiger pacing its cage, emboldening him to the act. Balram writes a letter to the Chinese leader -- this is the roguish voice-over narrative in the film -- and briefly meets the man, his hero. At that time, he declares that the era of the white people is over. And, in fact, there is not a single European or White person in the movie.
Bahrani is a superb film-maker. (he's an American, second-generation Iranian, raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and has made a number of fine films, including A Most Violent Year, also produced for Netflix and about a feud between heating oil purveyors in New Jersey; he is one of the few American movie-makers seriously concerned with economic issues.) The White Tiger is very funny for its first hour before it turns feverish and savage in its last half. The images are startling: we see mansions with mobs of monkeys on their roofs, horrifying poverty, and tremendous wealth. The feet of a corpse burned on a pyre seem to turn inward. The drivers at the luxury hotel live in an underground garage, sleeping like unburied bodies under mosquito nets, bathed in an eerie green light. The film shows the structure of poverty as being an endless cycle of exploitation -- the landlords exploit the peasants who, in turn, prey on one another. Balram's granny is every bit as oppressive as the Stork's henchmen. In one scene, Balram abuses a beggar -- it's a pecking order where everyone above kicks everyone below. The liberal Ashok and his New York wife profess solidarity with the poor but when the "chips are down" they show their true colors and participate just as vigorously in the oppression of others as the more villainous characters -- in fact, they may be worse because they are hypocrites. Of course, India is fantastically picturesque and colorful -- a land of only two castes, those with big fat bellies and those without. Some live in the light and others the darkness -- the film seems to paraphrase Brecht's Three Penny Opera. Astonishing poverty lives cheek to jowl with incredible opulence -- no one has taught Balam how to brush his teeth and he curses his father for not teaching him this; but, of course, the poor man had no money to buy toothpaste or a toothbrush. We are shown an extended montage of Balram stealing money from his employer's by falsifying invoices for repairs and peddling gas from the boss' tank. But Balram tells us that all this thievery practiced over many months would not amount to enough money to even buy a double shot of Johnny Walker Red at the Hilton bar. The film is in dialogue with another similar picture Slum Dog Millionaire -- in that movie, the hero wins a game show to become rich and famous. "I wasn't going to go on some bull-shit game show and make my fortune," Balram tells us derisively. The movie suggests that the only way for the wretched of the earth to better themselves is by violence. This violence is probably not equal to the savagery of the oppressors. At one point, Balram learns that his entire family of seventeen has been massacred by the Mongoose and his assassins. (It doesn't seem to bother him.) In fact, we see a sequence showing everyone gunned down, with some old men being killed by having their skulls bashed open by thugs wielding bricks. The Indian system of caste is maintained by brutal violence and can only be overcome by similar cruelty. A statue of Gandhi is Delhi leading the people into the future is a vicious lie. The Great Socialist is the queen of the thieves. But as the poet Iqbal says (as quoted by Balram): "The moment you notice what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave." Bahrani's India is an edifice built upon the consent and compliance of its slaves -- they offer their faces to be slapped. But once they see the horrible truth, namely that their brutish oppressors are not tyrannizing them from benevolent motives, the cage is open and fresh horrors must, then, occur. This is an entertaining film that is, also, singularly uncompromising.
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