The White Tiger
Dir: Ramin Bahrani (2hrs 5mins) (15)
★★★★
Adapted from Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize winner, is a darkly humorous rags-to-riches tale set in India in the economic boom of the late Noughties, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Its protagonist is Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav), a charming but dirt-poor peasant who talks his way into a job as a Delhi-based driver for a ruthless landlord, The Stork (Mahesh Manjrekar). Balram is grateful and obsequious at first, in awe of The Stork’s suave son (Rajkummar Rao) and his sophisticated, New-York-raised wife (Priyanka Chopra Jonas). But he comes to see his servile mentality as a curse when the family makes him the fall guy for a crash he didn’t cause. Learning to emulate their ruthlessness and cynicism, he turns the tables, lining his pockets and launching himself on a corrupt path to success.
The White Tiger
The “sting of underclass payback” doesn’t rival that in 2019’s said Owen Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter, but the film taps into the same “simmering rage”. And the dynamics of master-servant relations are nicely drawn: there are “notes of ambition and cunning” beneath Balram’s incessant smiles, and his employers pull rank on him in a hundred subtle ways while piously insisting they see him as an equal. Who knew that an exploration of India’s social divide and a parable of its economic rise could be this much fun, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Blown along by “snappy” editing and a hip-hop-driven soundtrack, it’s a “punchy and propulsive” watch, teeming with watchable supporting characters while conveying the “extraordinary sweep and hubbub” of Delhi and Bangalore.
Parasite,
Available on Netflix from Friday 22 January.
Hollywood coming of age genre, said Glenn Kenny in The New York Times. It’s spring in the suburbs, and teenagers wearing sundresses and jackets and ties are heading to a dance. The boys talk, crudely but naively, about sex; the girls about fashion and popularity. The dance is held at a local deli and has a strange, ritual air. The girls form one line, the boys another, music begins and, communicating with hand gestures, they pair off. The scene builds to a dreamy climax – but then the film turns to those who got passed over at the dance, or were too anxious to go, and things become stranger still.
“A satirical parable on conformism and aspiration”, is “as creepy as a ghost story”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. In Hollywood, it’s usually the rebels and free-thinkers who break away from their small town. But this film suggests a bleaker truth – it’s the “competent conformists” who tend to make it, while the rest remain behind. As the film progresses, it keeps widening its gaze, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe, taking in “exhausted parents”, “defeated men and women in their 20s” and more. Its dreamlike aspects include a vagueness about time – it’s hard to tell which postwar decade we’re in. This sort of thing might “frustrate literalminded audiences”, but the film succeeds as “a work of gentle American surrealism – a lo-fi love song to those left behind by character and chance”.
Ham on Rye
Available on Mubi.