Lion
Directed by: Garth Davis
Written by: Luke Davis - Based on the book "A Long Way Home" by Saroo Brierley
Starring: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Sunny Pawar, Abhishek Bharate, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chtterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Deepti Naval, Divian Ladwa, Sachin Joab, Pallavi Sharda, Arka Das
Drama - 118 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Dec 2016
Written by: Luke Davis - Based on the book "A Long Way Home" by Saroo Brierley
Starring: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Sunny Pawar, Abhishek Bharate, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chtterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Deepti Naval, Divian Ladwa, Sachin Joab, Pallavi Sharda, Arka Das
Drama - 118 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Dec 2016
Lion’s first half is one of the best films of the year. You cannot help but feel anxious for little five year-old Saroo as he gets hopefully lost across India, winds up in one of the most crowded cities on Earth, can’t speak the language, and whose odds of ever seeing his family again are close to none. The second half of this South Asian Fievel from An American Tail is tedium personified as grown-up Saroo stares sullenly at computer screens trying to find his childhood village while dryly explaining to all within earshot how they can never understand his feelings of loss, not knowing, and the intense need to find home. They probably could understand if he would crawl out of his shell and realize the search for home does not have to include depression and self-imposed isolation. Mainstream audiences will flock to Lion’s gut-wrenching core and await their expected payoff with tissues in hand. The rest of us grow restless lamenting what Lion may have been if the two halves even remotely operated on the same level.
Based on the memoir “A Long Way Home” by the real Saroo Brierley about being adopted, growing up and living in Hobart, Tasmania for 20 years, and the sudden recollection of long buried images, Saroo remembers his mother, brother, and importantly, the train station where he first became lost. Employing a brand new application at the time to aid his search, Lion prominently features Google Earth. Grown-up Saroo (Dev Patel, Chappie) habitually retreats to his couch, cues up the program, and methodically scrolls across vein-like railroad tracks searching for tell-tale water towers and platforms. For it was at one of these random train stops where young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) fell asleep on a train, traveled almost two days east to Kolkata, and wound up in one of the worst situations your imagination could dream up for a little kid.
Based on the memoir “A Long Way Home” by the real Saroo Brierley about being adopted, growing up and living in Hobart, Tasmania for 20 years, and the sudden recollection of long buried images, Saroo remembers his mother, brother, and importantly, the train station where he first became lost. Employing a brand new application at the time to aid his search, Lion prominently features Google Earth. Grown-up Saroo (Dev Patel, Chappie) habitually retreats to his couch, cues up the program, and methodically scrolls across vein-like railroad tracks searching for tell-tale water towers and platforms. For it was at one of these random train stops where young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) fell asleep on a train, traveled almost two days east to Kolkata, and wound up in one of the worst situations your imagination could dream up for a little kid.
Any parent of a child this age will quake in fear at the idea of someone so small and unaware of the larger world promptly set adrift alone. Young Saroo speaks Hindi, the language prevalent in his native north-central India. Kolkata’s lingua franca is Bengali, a sister language to be sure, but inherently unrecognizable to a Hindi speaker. Ignored as just another orphan vagrant plaguing one of the world’s busiest train stations, the few adults who take the time to listen hear gibberish while Saroo yells for his mother and brother in vain. Saroo has no idea he is from central India and that what he thinks is the name of his village is really just a neighborhood within a larger town.
Remarkable already, here is where Saroo’s story becomes lucky. 80,000 children disappear every year in India and Lion offers a few scenarios as to why. Gangs of children scavenge the train station and its surroundings while dodging the child-catching authorities. Suspect adults appearing generous and helpful on the outside turn out to be middle men on networks most likely of child prostitution rings or modern day child slavery operations. Saroo follows one nice lady offering soda pop, food, and an understanding of Hindi until he is smart enough to sprint away after the very unsettling eyes and hands of a man warn him something is not right here.
Remarkable already, here is where Saroo’s story becomes lucky. 80,000 children disappear every year in India and Lion offers a few scenarios as to why. Gangs of children scavenge the train station and its surroundings while dodging the child-catching authorities. Suspect adults appearing generous and helpful on the outside turn out to be middle men on networks most likely of child prostitution rings or modern day child slavery operations. Saroo follows one nice lady offering soda pop, food, and an understanding of Hindi until he is smart enough to sprint away after the very unsettling eyes and hands of a man warn him something is not right here.
The eventual orphanage Saroo winds up in is not much better. Guards disappear children in the middle of the night sometimes never to be seen again. Saroo’s luck kicks in again and a loving couple from Tasmania adopts him, raising him as their own surrounded by peaceful bodies of water and green space; a calm, polar opposite world from Kolkata’s garbage-strewn streets and overflowing sewage. Nicole Kidman (Stoker) and David Wenham (300: Rise of an Empire), playing Saroo’s adoptive parents, are as kind and loving as the world imagines the best adoptive parents are. Saroo quickly forgets his Indian background, embraces Australia and all it has to offer, and tellingly shows in a dinner scene 20 years later how much of his native land is gone; he requires cutlery because he forgot how to eat with his fingers, a technique he used to have mastered. Saroo’s new parents adopt a second boy, Mantosh, who arrives with severe emotional problems and looks to have fallen into one of the many traps Saroo avoided back in India.
Mantosh has no family back in India to find; he has an alcohol addiction, destructive inner demons, and an exasperated adopted brother fed up with how he treats his new parents. There is a Slumdog Millionaire echo in the background and it is not just because Dev Patel is in the movie, the protagonist is a plucky underdog, or even that I believe I saw a quick shot of Slumdog on a TV in one scene. It is the atmosphere of expectant hope. If Saroo plugs away as hard as he can, eventually, good fortune will come his way. A hopeful score by Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran (Equals) accompanies Saroo’s quest and Sia, who seems to provide a new song to about half of the movies this year, wraps up the package with the catchy “Never Give Up”.
To frame the story, director Garth Davis and screen adaptor Luke Davies do not begin in the present and work through flashbacks as Slumdog does. They wisely choose to tell a linear story from Saroo the young boy to Saroo the intrepid internet explorer. Supporting Saroo in the year’s most poorly written supporting role is his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara, Kubo and the Two Strings). Mara is one of contemporary cinema’s greatest talents and the obnoxious way her character is marginalized to the sidelines with nothing to do but repeat calming certainties or just stare into space almost amounts to a cinematic crime. Any actress could react to Saroo’s moody isolation and disappear off screen for enormous chunks of time before popping up again in another brief scene of sympathy. Mara did not need to waste her time with such an underwritten role.
To frame the story, director Garth Davis and screen adaptor Luke Davies do not begin in the present and work through flashbacks as Slumdog does. They wisely choose to tell a linear story from Saroo the young boy to Saroo the intrepid internet explorer. Supporting Saroo in the year’s most poorly written supporting role is his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara, Kubo and the Two Strings). Mara is one of contemporary cinema’s greatest talents and the obnoxious way her character is marginalized to the sidelines with nothing to do but repeat calming certainties or just stare into space almost amounts to a cinematic crime. Any actress could react to Saroo’s moody isolation and disappear off screen for enormous chunks of time before popping up again in another brief scene of sympathy. Mara did not need to waste her time with such an underwritten role.
Lion is Garth Davis’s first feature film but he has plenty of experience with the miniseries Top of the Lake on his resumé. Perhaps Lucy’s role appears stronger on paper than it turns out on screen. Director of Photography Greig Fraser (Foxcatcher) is the major filmmaking talent on the crew. He sets the camera at young Saroo’s short eye level so we see the impossibly crowded train station through his eyes. We look up at kneecaps and waistlines as they jostle and shove their way by. Davis and Fraser thankfully got to shoot at the actual train station and Howrah Bridge that connects East and West Kolkata. These location shots provide enormous benefits to Lion’s first half authenticity. It is a shame and a colossal waste of effort that Lion’s second chapter throttles the rest of a potential masterpiece.
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