My name's Ramin Bahrani.
I'm the writer and director of The White Tiger
and this is The Story Behind the Script.
This scene is in the middle of the film.
Balram is a servant to this rich family
and the night before, there's been a terrible accident
where one of his two masters and his wife were driving drunk
and she took control of the car
and she crashed into a kid and killed the kid.
And Balram's coming into the scene thinking that the entire family
is proud of him for protecting his masters.
But then, something terrible happens,
so it's a real turning point in the movie.
Have you spoken with anyone about what happened last night?
No, sir. I washed the car and went to bed.
-Good. -Yes, sir.
It's important that you not say a word to anyone.
Yes, sir.
Would you like some paan?
This character is normally quite cruel to him.
The brother of the master.
Here, he's suddenly treating him like family.
Put it in your mouth.
-It's good right? -Wow, it's very good, sir.
The judge has been taken care of.
If your man does what he's supposed to do,
you'll have nothing to worry about.
There's actually not a lot of setups in this scene.
The number of shots are not...
There's not a lot of them,
but this was always meant to be an over the shoulder
on The Mongoose.
He's always in an over.
But this is the main shot of the film,
which is on a wide lens on a steadicam.
I wanted the camera to move to Balram's face
as he's reading this forced confession.
And Adarsh is such a great actor that watching his performance
ended up moving everybody on the day,
which doesn't happen often on a film set,
where the whole cast and even the crew,
even the grips,
are suddenly moved by a performance.
And it's due to this great actor.
I'll explain later. Keep reading.
"...that I panicked
and refused my obligations to the injured party...
and fled the scene.
That I was alone in the car and alone responsible..."
And really here, Balram, what's so amazing
is he is trying to understand what's happened to him.
He's trying to remain a servant.
You can see the facade he has of smiling.
He's just...
That's part of the theme of the film.
It's been so engrained in him to be a servant
that he can't imagine it any other way.
And part of his journey in this film towards freedom,
towards breaking out of the trap of servitude,
includes mental servitude.
Most of this is scripted,
but I love the actors to improvise, to come up with their own ideas,
and the Ashok character really wanted to protest this scene more.
-You're treating him like an idiot. -Keep quiet, Ashok.
We shouldn't do this. It’s not right.
Then why don't you and Pinky go to the police station
and tell them what happened?
If you understand law, then handle this.
Otherwise, shut up!
We improvised some lines with The Mongoose
that ended up really getting him to be quiet.
"Do you want to go to the police?"
And "Bring your wife, we'll go down there.
Do you understand law better than me?"
Balram, just go on.
Balram, go on.
Sign there, next to granny.
After Balram signs,
he starts saying things like "Aren't we brothers?
Don't we hang out together?"
These kind of improvisations were amazing,
because it was so double-faced
and Balram had no choice but to nod.
And here, his performance is just overwhelming, I find.
The...
tear and the smile at the same time
is one of the contradictions of the film.
And one of the...
The overwhelming impact of servitude,
which see all over the world now,
which could come from many reasons: caste, class, race...
The most frightening to me is class servitude.
The growing gap in wealth and equality around the world.
We see servants like Balram all over the western world now.
We have a Rolodex of servants in our telephones.
Uber drivers, seamless delivery people,
task rabbit workers that we can call.
This I always wanted to be a high-angle shot,
slowly pushing in with no cutting.
We've had so many close-ups, now's the time to be high and wide
and to feel his loneliness and his sense of loss.
And this is improvised, that Balram would walk back to the door,
but knows there's nothing he can do.
This next sequence outside we did quite quickly actually,
we were late for lunch.
The cinematographer, Paolo Carnera,
had a great idea to put the camera up here.
And I said, "Yes, and put it on a zoom lens
because I'm going to want to zoom at some point."
And the actor and I talked. He said "What do you want me to do?"
I said, "Well, as usual I want you to go with your gut",
and he had this idea of throwing his shoes, which I never expected.
And when he did this, I quickly thought,
"My God, we should get this POV shot of the dizzying impact
of these rich apartment towers that make him stumble."
And I noticed this grass here, these tall weeds,
and I asked the actor, Adarsh, "What do these remind you of?"
And he said, "My childhood village."
I said, "It reminds me of the exact same thing.
Could you use it in the scene?"
And so he went and discovered this moment
which I found so moving.
Where he hides in there,
to go to some place to find safety, or whatever he's looking for.
And I always imagined it would cut to this shot,
so I had planned this shot accordingly,
with that movement around that chandelier to find him.
This is the first time in the movie that we break the fourth wall.
To think of this again makes me so angry
that I might go out
and cut the throat of some rich man right now.
I spent about probably a year writing the script
and we shot the movie in 60 days.
And then it was almost...
The post-production period was long. Almost 10, 11 months.
The idea of telling stories about unseen, unheard voices
is something I've done in my career.
Telling a story of a man who just wants to be free,
who wants to reach his potential as a human being
and is trapped by societal forces
is a story I'm really drawn to
and I think many, many people could relate to.
Of course, his journey takes him
on some quite bizarre twists and turns
and he does some unethical and crazy things
to get to his freedom.
But we don't necessarily have to agree with his decisions,
but I do feel audiences around the world came to understand them
and connect to them.
...not just to me, but to my family.
And that takes no normal human being,
but a freak, a pervert of nature.
It would, in fact,
take a White Tiger.