Love, Lost and Found

MOST STORIES of adopted children searching for their biological parents spring from an “emptiness”, a feeling of “not belonging”. Lion, based on a true story, explores the void as not an absence of love but a presence that hollows out everything else. Love fills every corner, every frame, every memory, as Lion looks at the world — from the swamp of Kolkata to the pristine seas of an Australian island — through the eyes of a five-year-old. It’s a view you may have lost sight of; it’s a view you won’t forget in a hurry.

By now, the story of Saroo Brierley, a child from a small village in Madhya Pradesh, lost in Kolkata, adopted in Australia, who found his home 25 years later through Google Earth, is well known. Debutant director Garth Davis, adapting Brierley’s book on that search, had to make it new enough to matter. He does it by focusing not on the search itself but what drove it and what it did to those around it: Saroo (played as a child by Pawar, and then by Patel); his girlfriend Lucy (Mara); his adoptive parents (Kidman and Wenham); and his half-brother.

A long and satisfying first half tells the story of how Saroo comes to be lost. It spans from the dusty plains, where his mother (a luminescent Bose) works as a labourer, to the time he spends pilfering coal with his brother, to the train he gets onto by mistake, to the streets of Kolkata he finds himself in, to the people who seek to exploit him, to the garbage dump he scrounges for rags to sell, to the crowded orphanage where he eventually lands up in. There is nothing glorious about poverty, and every time you fear Davis may resort to a trick like that, he stays away. It remains an incomprehensible universe, as it must have seemed to Saroo, who takes every day as it comes, including unremarkably carrying around town a cardboard sheet that a fellow street kid lent him to sleep on. Whoever he meets, he only has one question: Can they take him to mummy? He longs to hear her tell him he has been a good boy.

The Australian part can’t match up to the stilling effect the Kolkata section has. It drags in parts, is repetitive in others, and deliberately maudlin in some. However, no one, including Kidman, completely patting down her star presence, overshadows what remains central to the story. The affair with Lucy, brief but powerful, is an accomplishment in how naturally she comes into his life. The scene where Saroo’s past memories flood back, of a brother calling out his name, of a mother waiting by a digging site for him, of a jalebi he once shared with them, is as nicely handled.

The film has six Oscar nominations, including for Patel and Kidman. This is Patel’s best performance by far, but the tall, lanky actor also shines because of the light cast by Pawar’s radiant acting. By the snot that rests constantly on his face, the smile that won’t leave his lips, and the wise look that keeps returning to his eyes.

When a girl at the orphanage tells him the first thing she would do when she gets out is buy a watch, this wise boy knows better than to ask why. It will break your heart. WHEN, WITHIN a short while of the film opening, you start casting about for something to hang a peg on, it is never a good sign.

I spent most of Rangoon searching for the film. Multiple threads make it up: it is 1943, the British are fighting Hitler and are up against the rising tide of Indian freedom fighters, split between Gandhi’s pacifism, and Subhash Chandra Bose’s militarism.

It’s a heavy slice of history for anyone to unpack, and the film gets tangled in superimposing a love triangle on the time and place. Post-interval, it battens down and focuses on advancing the plot, such as there is, but overall, Rangoon remains a disappointingly patchy and disjointed effort.

The trio comprises a suave Parsi filmmaker Russi Billimoria (Khan), a patriotic Indian soldier Nawab Malik (Kapoor), and their object of affection, the wildly popular stunt heroine Miss Julia (Ranaut). Their journey from the lavish film sets in Bombay to the war-torn borders of Burma is pitted by intrigue and rivalry, featuring a dazzling sword, the forces of the INA, and Miss Julia’s morale-boosting acts for the “boys in the fauj.”

The intention of Vishal Bhardwaj’s ambitiously mounted film is clear: to weave the skeins of love and war in order to make a movie full of throbbing passion and grand statements. But the execution, marred by stilted writing, never quite matches up, the gap narrowing in just a few places in the second half.

To make a slice of history come alive on screen, you need all-round conviction — of setting, plot and characters. The three lead actors are all a good fit for their parts — Khan in uber-stylish suits, Kapoor in muddy fatigues, and Ranaut in flouncy dresses and tight curls; they all work hard, but break through only in bits and pieces, and the film rarely rises above its costumery and puffery.

The best part of Rangoon are its songand-dances: there is no one quite like Bhardwaj when it comes to creating drama through melody and verse. But they are packed in too close, and while giving us more to watch, also causes a loss in momentum. The interesting supporting cast, which includes, amongst others, Kawaguchi as a wandering Japanese soldier, Shukla as Miss Julia’s constant companion and the bearer of a terrible secret, Kumar, as a company actor, never really gets a chance to show its skills fully. And Mccabe as the ghazalsinging, Hindi-spouting bad Brit is more unintentionally hilarious than menacing.

Modelled on stunt queen Fearless Nadia, Ranaut’s is the stand-out performance. Her body language is spot on, and some of her action sequences are thrilling, even if you can see the computer graphics a mile off. And she gets one spectacular speaking moment, the camera tight on her face, when she speaks of love and desire and heartbreak.

It is the kind of moment which will stay with you. Wish I could say the same about the film.