Lion Review

A deviation from the top 1000 films of all time to review Lion, a film that I watched for my mum's birthday.

Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is a five year old boy from Ganesh Talai in the slums of India.  He spends his time with his older brother Guddu, including following him to work at night.  When Guddu discovers that Saroo has done this, he tells him to wait for him until he returns.  Saroo waits and falls asleep in a train-car, which takes him to Calcutta.  He is alone in this strange town, with nobody to help him, and to make matters worse, he only speaks Hindi, whereas everybody else speaks Bengali.  Eventually he is taken to an orphanage and from there, he is adopted by a Tasmanian couple John (David Wenham) and Sue (Nicole Kidman.) Twenty years later, an adult Saroo (Dev Patel) begins looking for a way to return home.

This is a poignant and heart-breaking film, and the fact that it is based on a true story, makes it that much more powerful.  The performances were strong, with Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, both quite rightly, up for Oscars.  The first act of the film is set in Indi, spoken in Hindi and seen through the eyes of five year old Saroo.  It is obvious that he has come from an impoverished background, yet as he has come from an impoverished background, yet as he has never known any different, he doesn't complain about it.  Rather he is a jubilant child, which makes his character more nuanced and interested to watch.  He becomes more nuanced when his life changes in the few hours that it takes for the train to take him to Calcutta.

Lion ends with a line reading that 80,000 children a year go missing in India and to follow the journey of one of them was interesting to watch.  Even after Saroo arrives in Calcutta, he is determined to get home by following the train tracks, demonstrating his will for survival.

Another thing I liked was how subtle and understated the darker elements of the film were.  Lion is rated PG, which means for the most part it is family friendly, but there are many allusion to more sinister parts.  Saroo's orphanage is implied to be a dark place, where the children are locked up, yet the best example of my point is when Saroo also becomes the victim of a paedophile.  When Saroo is walking along the trainlines to get home, he is taken in by a supposedly friendly woman who is actually grooming him for a paedophile.  She bathes him and presents him to the paedophile who inspects him, whilst he is still dripping wet.  Very little is said or done to indicate this man's hidden agenda, but it is clear what he wants.  Later, Saroo sensing something is amiss, runs away.  The threat of this violence was far more chilling and effective than actually seeing it first-hand.  If we had seen it, it could have lost its effect altogether.


Although I especially liked the time and pacing spent on developing Saroo's character, I feel that other sections did not receive the same treatment.  The best example of this is Saroo's adopted brother Mantosh.  We first see Mantosh as a child, the same age as Saroo and it is clear that he is so mentally disturbed, that whenever he is scared or angry, he begins hitting himself.  This was particularly frightening to watch, considering his young age, but I don't feel like anything came from this subplot.  As an adult, Mantosh, is only in a handful of scenes and it is made clear that he is a disappointment compared to Saroo, and also a great drain on John and Sue.  I feel much could have been done to have developed this subplot.

The second subplot I had issues with was Saroo's relationship with his on/off girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara.) This criticism also ties into my last issue with the time jumps.  The first time-jump of twenty years is perfectly logical, as we don't need to see Saroo growing up, but then there are time jumps of two or three years, which are random and abrupt.  After the first time jump, we see Saroo begin his search for home, as well as his relationship with Lucy.  Then there's a time jump of two years, and we see Saroo is still searching for home.  What are we supposed to believe? That he has been searching for two years? Also at this point, his relationship with Lucy finishes, as his obsession with finding home consumes him.  Then there's another time jump of two years, and we see that Saroo and Lucy have rekindled their relationship.  Has nothing happened to them in these two years to change this outcome?

Secondly, and this is a massive nitpick, but I find it weird that we never saw the pair kiss.  We see them before and after sex, of course we don't see them having sex, nor do we need too, but it doesn't show them doing the one thing that would kick it all off, which I found peculiar.

Nevertheless, this was a tragic and uplifting film, especially at the end when Saroo returns home to find his mother and sister waiting for him.  Guddu was killed by a train on the night of Saroo's disappearance.  This uplift was only amplified by how the real-life documentary footage of the real-life Saroo reuniting with his mother is shown, but also by the final lines of the film, which explain that throughout his whole life, Saroo has been mispronouncing his name.  His name was Sheru, which means Lion.