Lion

Lion

Starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, Sunny Pawar

Directed by Garth Davis

The Story:
In a small poor town in India in the mid 1980s, young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) looks up to his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), and he in turn protects Saroo as the two embark on different money making schemes to help their mother and young sister survive.  One night Saroo goes with Guddu on a night job, but gets separated when Saroo falls asleep.  He finds himself alone on a train, and ends up in a whole other town in India, not speaking their dialect, and not knowing who his mother's name is nor the town he grew up in.

Ultimately Saroo is adopted by an Australian couple - John (David Wenham) and Sue (Nicole Kidman) Brierley, and Saroo is taken to Tasmania to be raised by the loving couple.  As the years go by, Saroo grows up in a loving home, and finally reaches adulthood.  Now an adult himself, Saroo (Dev Patel) begins a relationship with fellow college student Lucy (Rooney Mara), and gets the urge to find his family.  Thanks to Google Earth, he manages to find the town he grew up in, and hopefully he will be able to be reunited with his mother and brother he had lost twenty five years earlier.

The Synopsis:
Based on the memoirs of Saroo Brierley called "A Long Way Home," "Lion" is one of those rare films that leaves a profound effect on the viewer in a positive - if also bittersweet - way.  It is a powerful, moving piece of cinema that doesn't come along that often, which is both a shame and a blessing: a shame because there isn't more heart-tugging films like this, but also a blessing because you appreciate a film like this all the more due to its rarity. 

"Lion" managed to accomplish something to me personally that hasn't been done in awhile: take the almost entire first half of the movie with practically no dialogue.  The last movie this worked with for me was "WALL-E," and much like "Lion" it had the same premise - someone alone in a world filled with danger trying to survive.  Here it's young Saroo who gets separated from his loving family, and is forced to grow up in an exponentially fast way as he fends off starvation and the real dangers of a harsh, unforgiving world.

*Side note: "Lion" manages to really show the true terror of child abduction in India.  Every year hundreds of thousands of children are abducted and sold into slavery or the sex trade, and it's something that's terribly under-reported.*

So the first half of the film shows Saroo as a young child, and it was a dangerous way of telling the story for first-time director Garth Davis.  Since there's hardly any dialogue, he threatened to lose the viewer - who generally has become over-saturated with fast-paced dialogue, action and suspense for most movies - to boredom.  It's also a huge weight to hold for newcomer Sunny Pawar, who never acted in a film before.  Not only was he new to the acting world, but he didn't know English, and he had to carry the weight of the first half of the film on his young, diminutive shoulders.  However, much like Atlas held the world on his shoulders in a mighty way, so did Pawar hold the weight of the movie in a very mighty way indeed.  His facial expressions and nuances to his role told a story more powerful than the longest monologue, more heart-wrenching than the best soliloquy, and more profound than the finest tuned thespian. 

The second half of the film is more contemporary, but due to the powerful nature of the first half we're already fully invested in this character and we will follow him to the depths of hell and back if we could.  Here Dev Patel - most well-known for his role in "Slumdog Millionaire" - truly shines and earns his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as he takes on the role of the older Saroo who pines for finding his family and reuniting with his long-lost brother.  Armed only with memories an Google Earth, he tries to achieve the impossible - not just finding a needle in a haystack, but finding a needle in a billion haystacks.  The odds were perpetually against him: how would he find the town he grew up in when he didn't remember the name or find his mother whom he never knew her name, in a country with over a billion people?

This is the main thrust of the second half, as we turn into detectives along with Saroo in hopes of a happy ending.  We've seen him endure the tough streets of India, and now we want him to have that classic Hollywood happy ending.  This is all the more powerful because it's not something created in the mind of a Hollywood executive - it really happened. 

It's during Saroo's older years we meet the other players in the movie.  As his longsuffering girlfriend, Rooney Mara isn't given much material to work with, nor did David Wenham - best known for his role as Faramir in the "Lord of the Rings" movies - get any real screentime, but it's Nicole Kidman (Academy Award nominated for her performance here) who shines along with Patel.  As his adopted mother, Kidman tows the line of the typical adopted mother role and wanting Saroo to find his true mother, but does so in a brilliant, powerful way that's deeply emotional and continues to pull the heart strings.  Much like Patel, Kidman worked to earn her Academy Award nomination here.

So the first half of the film we see young Saroo endure the horrors of living on the streets of India, followed by a grown-up Saroo who goes in search of his mother and brother.  Then there was the ending, which ties everything together in a way that grips your heart and squeezes every ounce of life out of it until you're left watching the rest of the film through tear-stained eyes, but not in a bad way.  It's like seeing a person's life from the beginning, witnessing their highs and lows, and traveling with them through a deeply personal investigation.  It doesn't matter how hackneyed it is, you're fully invested in this young man's life and you are right with him through to the very end.  It's a very rare film indeed that elicits such a response, but "Lion" did just that.

The Summary:
Every once in a while there comes a movie that's more than a movie, but a real experience.  "Lion" is one of those movies.

The Score: A+