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Bahrani’s take on Balram’s present-day circumstances is eventually so restricted to the beginning and end of the film that it begins to feel like a foregone conclusion, rather than like the curiosity that it is.
The characters don’t quite come to life. They aren’t trapped by prescribed social roles so much as by the programmatic design of the narrative, which insists it is showing things as they really are. If it wasn’t so insistent, it might be more convincing.