Cinema Review: Lion

At last, a movie that actually lives up to its PR hype… In our digitally connected world, it is almost impossible for us to imagine how it would feel to be lost, cut off absolutely from home and loved ones.

Five-year-old Saroo (Sunny Parwar) is left to sleep at an Indian railway station one night while his brother goes to work. He wakes up on an empty moving bogey and is unable to get off until it arrives at Kolkata. Surviving the perils of that city’s teeming streets, Saroo gets lucky and is taken into an orphanage from where he is adopted by a childless couple from Hobart (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). Twenty years later, as a young man (Dev Patel) studying in Melbourne, he is increasingly affected by his past, by the need to go back and find his real family – to rediscover the identity that he has never fully left behind. But there are no records of where he came from, no paper trail for him to follow – there is only the recollection of the water tower at the station where he last saw his brother.

Based on Saroo Brierley’s book, the story is barely credible, but it is true, and director Garth Davis’s telling of it pulls hard on the heart-strings without abandoning a close observation of his other characters’ relationship with Saroo, though the love interest provided by Rooney Mara never really takes flame.

Shot locally and in Kolkata, the Indian scenes are by far the most vibrant – the opening sequence of Saroo and his brother pinching coal from a freight train is thrillingly executed, while the images of children swimming with buffalos and pilgrims at prayer by the Howrah Bridge are unforgettable – whereas those in Australia focus more on Saroo’s brooding and ultimately urgent desire to find his way home. Patel is wonderful in the part – his Australian accent is perfect and maintained throughout – but as good as he and the support cast are, the movie belongs to Sunny. It is an extraordinary performance.