Sunday, February 21, 2021

The White Tiger is not so beautiful.




I watched the acclaimed Netflix original White Tiger. I should say I did not resonate with the film so much. The White Tiger is not so beautiful.


It tells a story of class division and political dirt in India. The protagonist aspires to climb the social ladder, identifying himself with the white tiger he sees in a zoo. The beauty of the beast inspires him to break free from the slave mentality.


Although the satire is good and the actings superb, the script and editing lacked a crucial finishing touch, depicting only the crime and not the punishment. It may be OK to be bullish in the climb uphill, but if a self-reflection is lacking there it would fall short of a literally masterpiece, let alone a cinematic one.


To be fair, I haven't read the original novel yet. I might have different impressions from the presumably more nuanced text. 


If the film had some self-reflecting element at the end, I might have been more favourably inclined. The fact that it was received favourably by Western critics appears to suggest some element of political correctness applied to the rise of India and China by the West, repentant of its colonial past, which is good in itself but does not testify for the quality of the work. In all, I see it as a great missed opportunity.