Date: 2017
Director: Garth Davis
Actors/ Characters: Sunny Pawar/ Young Saroo, Abhishek Bharate/ Guddu, David Wenhm/ John Brierley, Nicole Kidman/ Sue Brierley, Dev Patel/ Saroo Brierley,Rooney Mara/ Lucy
Summary: A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Review
This year I set out to watch as many of the award nominated films as I could, amongst these was Lion. Honestly, I was not too impressed with the look of this film from the trailer along and probably wouldn’t have watched it if not for the hype, but I did watch it and I loved it. Compared to the other films that were nominated for awards I would without a doubt say this was one of the better ones I have seen.
From the opening shots of this film I could tell that it was going to be beautiful. The cinematography was consistently impressive and breathtaking. The prolonged tracking shots that established the film were really gorgeous and I loved how they tied back in at the end to show the journey that Saroo goes on throughout the course of this film.
By far, the most impressive and moving performances of this film came from Sunny Pawar- at only eight years old Sunny delivered a truly inspiration performance as young Saroo. Honestly I would go as far to say that he gave a better performance than Dev Patel and perhaps should have been nominated for the oscar instead. The scene in which Saroo realises the train has began to move and he is trapped aboard it was highly distressing and I felt really emotional watching it. I felt the loss of sound worked really well with the shots of Saroo crying out and shouting. I loved watching Saroo and Guddu’s relationship on screen both actors gave a really believable performance of brotherly love and it made the ending that much more tragic.
Although Dev Patel’s performance was excellent I felt that the narrative he had to work with wasn’t as strong as Sunny Pawar’s. Of course he had some amazing scene, especially the dinner scene and the final scene of the film, but most of his narrative for me was quite slow moving. From a film perspective I felt that Saroo’s search for his home was too dragged out which I understand was done to mirror reality but I felt that time could have been established through ellipsis instead.
Another performance I really enjoyed watching was Nicole Kidman. Her role as Saroo’s adoptive mother as extremely powerful and the kindness and affection she displayed made such a contrast from prior in the film that it was incredibly touching to see. I loved the scenes in which Saroo came home for the first time I felt the relationships between the three of them were subtle and highly realistic.
Rooney Mara delivered a really good performance however for me I felt her character added nothing to the narrative and she was an irrelevant edition to the cast. Her relationship with Saroo was really her only purpose and I felt that it was maybe a play to have a romantic element to the film rather than to add a deeper level to the story.
What impressed me most about this film was the sheer scale of emotions, characters, locations and messages it covered. A large amount of the narrative occurs in Calcutta, India which was a great insight into the lives of the people that live there. Davis managed to portray many of the issues and struggles for the citizens of Calcutta and the scenes that took place there were among some of my favourites from the film. The scene in the train station where the men came to snatch up the homeless children was truly horrific to watch on screen and even worse to think about actually happening in real life. That is why I think this film was really moving for me because it shed light on real life issues happening in a country that is often overlooked. Mantosh’s story really upset me also. It was so saddening to see the toll that his years in India and what he went through there did to him, the dinner scene as well was one that had me tearing up.
The ending of this film was really bittersweet for me. Partof me was really happy that Saroo was reunited with his mother and sister again and managed to find home after so many years. I was completely distraught when it was revealed that the reason why Guddu did not come back for Saroo was because he was ran over and killed by a train that night. The reunion of Saroo and his mother was beautiful to watch and again I was tearing up during this moment- after seeing the struggle that Saroo went through to survive and not being able to find home this ending was so cathartic to me. What surprised me as well about the ending of this film was the real life footage and information that was played at the end- often these parts of a true story film feel tacky or out of place however I felt that for this film they matched the tone of the film well.
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