'The White Tiger' is a more realistic ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, critics claim

Adarsh Gaurav is being hailed as the star of the Ramin Bahrani film

Planned for a selective theatrical release soon and then online on streaming service Netflix, The White Tiger is being considered as the front-runner for upcoming awards, reported Hindustan Times.

Featuring newbie Adarsh Gourav alongside established actors Rajkummar Rao and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, the film is based on Aravind Adiga’s prize-winning novel of the same name. Several critics from foreign publications such as Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter have been awestruck by Ramin’s contemporary retelling of India’s class scuffles and the psychology of enslavement. The story revolves around the journey of a poor Indian driver who must use his humour and schemes to break free from servitude to the rich masters, a practice almost too common in India.

Variety's Owen Gilberman said the film portrays a more realistic representation of Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning project Slumdog Millionaire. “Bahrani is no feel-good fantasist. The White Tiger taps engagingly into the rags-to-riches, Horatio-Alger-on-the Ganges mythology that made Slumdog Millionaire a global sensation. But it also recognises the earlier film as a fairy tale, positioning itself in key ways as the anti-Slumdog,” he wrote.

 

Gourav’s enactment as the subservient protagonist and later cynical Balram was applauded by all. Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt acquainted him as a “largely unknown actor whose soulful combination of sheer will and vulnerability should, in a just world, win him the kind of accolades that helped make Slumdog’s Dev Patel a star.”

Meanwhile, Variety called his performance a ‘small marvel’. It said, “He’s charismatic in a nearly silent way, and lets us see how the reflex to obey — not to up his salary but to ask for less of one, to bow and scrape before employers he views as masters — has been programmed into him.”

Rajkummar, who plays Balram’s master Ashok, was stated as a ‘charismatic Bollywood star’ while Priyanka was attributed for bringing emotional depth to a smaller role.