Classy crowd-pleaser details tenacious quest
Lion Running time: 1hr 58min Starring: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Nicole Kidman, Sunny Pawar, Abhishek Bharate, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Deepti Naval, Divian Ladwa, Sachin Joab, Pallavi Sharda, Arka Das Director: Garth Davis A TREMENDOUSLY moving performance from Dev Patel is the resilient soul of Lion, the incredible true story of Saroo Brierley and his tenacious quest to find the family from whom he was separated 25 years earlier.
But the role is made even more affecting by its line from the equally indelible work of Sunny Pawar, the remarkable young actor who plays him at age five in the film’s wrenching opening chapter.
Garth Davis, who comes from a background in commercials and co-directed the lauded drama series Top of the Lake with Jane Campion, has chosen wisely for his first feature project. Compared with the film that launched Patel’s career, Slumdog Millionaire, Lion is quite different – a sober and yet profoundly stirring contemplation of family, roots, identity and home, which engrosses throughout the course of its two-hour running time.
Luke Davies’ admirably measured screenplay, adapted from Brierley’s memoir A Long Way Home, brings the innocent gaze of a child to its most harrowing episodes, and then later, the hard-won maturity of a young man who has struggled to know himself despite being grateful for the life he has been given.
Both in India and later, when the action shifts to the Australian island state of Tasmania, cinematographer Greig Frasier frames the magnificent landscapes in all their ruggedness and beauty.
Covering the months when Saroo manages to survive alone in Calcutta, scrounging for food and narrowly escaping child abductors before being taken to an orphanage, Davies’ screenplay shows the extreme vulnerability of children and the cunning of those who prey on them by presenting themselves as rescuers.
The filmmakers’ ability to put us inside the head of a five-year-old boy is uncanny also in the tender scenes of his arrival in 1987 in Australia, at the home of his warm, adoptive parents, Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, both superb).
The script’s perceptive grasp of character, the director’s sensitivity to the material and the very fine work of the actors make these family scenes quite poignant, with some beautiful moments from Kidman in particular, in a deglamourised role that makes expert use of her emotional transparency.
The restraint and authentic feeling Davis brings to the material underscores at all times that Saroo’s amazing story is unique.
There’s no denying the swelling emotions of the final act, or remaining dry-eyed during the characters’ joyous reunion. – Hollywood Reporter