A heart-warming, uplifting journey
Review
There are two ways to view Lion. One is as a heart-warming tale of love beyond boundaries and the incandescent pull of home. The more cynical view is that it’s a two-hour advertisement for the wonders of Google Earth.
Let’s not be cynical, shall we? Let’s just enjoy this poignant and true story of a man who became separated from his family in India at age five, was adopted by an Australian couple and then tracked down his family 25 years after going missing.
Lion is really two beautifully-shot films — the tenacious story of five-year-old Saroo Brierley lost hundreds of miles in eastern India and the less dramatic, and slightly forced, story of that same boy all grown up looking for answers about his past.
Dev Patel proves he’s a talented, striking leading man, but even he would admit he’s delightfully overshadowed by newcomer Sunny Pawar, who plays his five-year-old self with irrepressible sweetness.
Luke Davies’ screenplay, adapted from Brierley’s memoir A Long Way Home, starts in 1986 with the younger Saroo tagging along with his older brother to scrounge for work. He then falls asleep on a decommissioned train that travels some 1,600 kilometres to Calcutta (now Kolkata).
Lost, hungry and scared, the boy isn’t even able to seek help since he speaks only Hindi in an area where Bengali is the common language. He scrounges for food, turns a piece of cardboard into a bed and narrowly escapes child abductors before being taken to an orphanage that resembles a prison. It’s a grim journey in which few adults are good. The camera doesn’t shy away from staring at gritty places and forgotten people.
Salvation comes in the form of Nicole Kidman in a truly appalling ‘80s wig. She and David Wenham play an Aussie couple who adopt young Saroo and Kidman turns in a very unglamorous, quiet and meditative performance.
But the second half of the film slackens somewhat as Patel takes over 25 years later.
He’s great as a brooding, haunted man but he has less to work with. If the first half was a compelling, physical journey, the second is one taken solely inside the mind, and the film degenerates into long moments showing Saroo’s solitary wanderings and sleeplessness. The dense crowds of harsh, urban India give way to the lush expanses of Tasmania.
The adult Saroo seems unmoored from his Indian roots until he encounters a fried cake called a jalebi that triggers childhood memories. Someone suggests he look at Google Earth — yes, it’s actually written into the script. (The company’s logo also appears on the screen multiple times, on the movie poster and Google is thanked in the end credits.)
Soon, Saroo is pushing away his girlfriend (a very bad idea since it’s the marvellous Rooney Mara) and studying satellite images from India by a certain internet company, tracing train tracks from a laptop.
A breakthrough gets him on the right track and soon he’s back on a plane, heading to his former home and a bittersweet finale with the people he left behind. It’s all thanks to love, tenaciousness and the good folks at Google. —AP