It's a great movie, better than I imagined it would be. Amazing actor, the guy who plays the servant, the guy who plays US-returnee 'master', Rajkumar Rao -- the husband to-be from Queen -- has been sorta typecast at this point, but this one's a well-made movie that stands true to the original book. Good book, better movie, great job all.
The actor playing the driver, Google tells me his name is Adarsh, has either an amazing character at his hand that will undoubtedly be used in so many movies hereon, or is an actor of great talent, on to achieve great things. His portrayal of the 'servant class', the way he moves, acts talks, the sly shift of the eye, movement of his hands and legs, they were so accurate, so realistic, I felt uncomfortable. A little voyeuristic, but also uncomfortable of inhabiting the same universe as his. If you can't identify with any characters, and don't know any characters from a movie, it's pure fiction. His acting made it like it was real. No good. But so good in a different way.
Priyanka Chopra plays...a US-returnee who thinks she can change the country, but also is gradually compromising on her morals until she can't take it anymore and returns to the US, leaving her husband to their driver-cum-servant. One could well imagine her heading out to a bar or on a blind date in the US after her divorce, looking for a guy, only to find Nick Jonas and marrying him. I'd buy that character story totally.
The master-servant relationship is an interesting one, as it was in the book. Talk of homo-eroticism is brought up frequently when untangling this interpersonal interaction. The servant does after all call his former master, who he brutally murders towards the end of the story by the way spoilers if you haven't read the book, his 'ex'. What are we to make of it? Does that mean he saw his master as his ex inside his head, or as partners while he was serving, or did something happen the narrator is not telling us about, that he is unaware about his unrealiability.
What is the nature of the master-servant relationship?
There's many other questions the movie raises, without clearly answering. The same issues are brought up by the book, which is quite faithfully portrayed though not as faithfully to make one squirm in discomfort since I have distinct memory of sexual exploitation of poor young men by landlords in the village. Thank god the movie does not touch that.
It's a pretty good movie, runs 2 hours 20 minutes, worth watching.
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