Write Readers, we’re about halfway there! The next film on the list is absolutely my favorite, and the one I’m rooting for to win the Academy Award for Best Picture: Lion.
Lion is the true story about an Indian boy named Saroo who gets lost from home at the age of five, and it takes him twenty years to get back home. It was written by Luke Davies and directed by Garth Davis in his debut. This film is based on the non-fiction book A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierley and Larry Buttrose. In the film stars Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, and Nicole Kidman. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Patel), Best Supporting Actress (Kidman), and Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s a phenomenal movie and from the moment I saw it, I wanted it to win above all of the other films I had seen.
Spoiler alerts ahead- be prepared for awesome.
Opening in Khandwa, India in 1986, Saroo lives with his mother, his older brother Guddu, and his younger sister. They do all sorts of things in order to get milk and food for the family. Guddu is up early one morning to head for a job, and Saroo begs to come with him. He even lifts the family bicycle to demonstrate his strength. When they arrive at a train station, Guddu wants to find some work, but Saroo is too tired to wake up. Guddu leaves him behind, and says that he will go and for Saroo to not move. When Saroo wakes up, Guddu hasn’t returned. Saroo decides to look for him on a nearby train. He gets on the train, and falls asleep again. When he wakes up, the train is moving. It takes a few days, but the train finally arrives in Calcutta, and Saroo is scared, lost, and unable to speak Bengali. No one can recognize where he lives, though he keeps saying over and over, “Ginestlay”. He begins to spend the night with some street children in the station, but narrowly avoids being snatched by some (sinister looking) adults. He wanders aimlessly until meeting a very nice woman, Noor, who takes him home with her, and feeds him delicious food and yummy soda. She tells him a nice man named Rama will help him look for his mother. When Rama arrives, he is wildly creepy, caressing Saroo’s face and asking Saroo to lie down with him, closer, and assesses his body. Noor is strangely excited about Rama’s help, and Rama is super weird about everything. Saroo seems to sense that Rama is a giant weirdo, and bolts out the door when Noor isn’t looking, which is lucky, because it seems there is an extremely robust child sales trade in India. Though Noor pursues her, Saroo escapes. He spends two months on the streets. One day he is mimicking a young man eating soup in a cafe, and this young man takes pity on the boy and brings him to the police station. The police, who can’t find his family, put Saroo in an orphanage. At the orphanage, a woman named Mrs. Sood tells Saroo she’s been looking for his family but to no avail, but they’ve found an Australian couple who want to adopt him, and Saroo flies to Tasmania.
There he lives with Sue and John Brierley, and another adopted brother Mantosh, who struggles with rage and self-harming behavior. We flash forward twenty years, and see Saroo a grown man, on his way to Melbourne to stud hotel management. He meets Lucy, and they begin a relationship. While hanging out with some Indian friends, he finds jalebi, a dessert he used to ask his brother Guddu for, and suddenly it all comes rushing back to him. He confides in his friends, who tell him he should try out this cool, newfangled thing called Google Earth to figure out where he came from and find his way home. Saroo decides to make the search, and becomes consumed. He and Lucy drift apart, and she finally moves out. Then, he fully commits. He creates a creepy, serial killer wall with a bunch of maps and push pins, grows messy, unkempt hair, and stops putting sheets on his bed (because savagery). He is overwhelmed at the thought of what his family has been experiencing over the last 20 years, being constantly worried about their missing son. He cuts himself off from his family, but finally goes to visit Sue, who has been ill. She tells him that she and John chose to adopt children, when apparently Saroo has been assuming she was infertile. In order to distract Saroo from his ridiculous self-absorption and complete martyrdom, she explains that far from being burdensome and difficult, she actually loves her children, and always knew she would adopt. Sadly, this revelation does not prompt Saroo to actually confide in her, but instead he returns to being tortured. While aimlessly scrolling through Google Earth one day, he recognizes the rocks where his mother used to work, and then finds his town Ganesh Talai. When he tells Sue what he’s been doing, she supports him, because she’s a great parent, even when her child is being an idiot. Saroo makes the trip back to India, and meets his mother and younger sister, but is heartbroken to find out that Guddu is dead. And apparently, all this time, Saroo has been mispronouncing his own name, and that it was actually meant to be Sheru, which is the Hindi word for “lion”.
So if that synopsis didn’t hit you in the feels, then we should probably have a conversation because that’s a separate situation that might need to be addressed. But don’t worry, you’ve still got time to tear up.
(Dear self, write a review that brings Write Readers to tears.)
Let’s talk about what’s terrible about this movie. Nothing.
What’s amazing about it? It could be the entire first half of the film, filled with Sunny Pawar, one of the most delightful child actors I have ever encountered. I’m pretty sure we were watching a documentary in action, because everything he did was as real as I’ve ever seen in my life. His love and adoration over his big brother Guddu was the most delightful thing on the planet. He is so terrified on the train, screaming for someone to help him get off that I was ready to reach through the screen and save him myself. I was on edge the entire time he was running from all of the child snatchers (no but seriously, why are there so many of them, and what are they doing with these kids anyway??) and it broke my heart watching him scrounge for food, try to put a giant spoon in his tiny front pocket, and mimic eating soup in the hopes that his empty belly might feel full. Serious tears were happening. And the way his face lights up when he drinks a sip of that delicious, fizzy orange beverage? I was ready to adopt some kids right then and there. I’m not sure why there was no acclaim about this young man, because no one could stop talking about Quvenzhane Wallis from Beasts of the Southern Wild and I thought Pawar was more extraordinary. Praises for his performance deserve to be sung far and wide!
Dev Patel plays older Saroo, and is also equally wonderful and marvelous! It’s true, Saroo did end up playing a little tortured and angsty, but Patel has a really beautiful enthusiasm and energy about him in this performance. His enjoyment and love of his family is warm and inviting, and the depth of his pain he feels is honest and incredibly real. I particularly enjoyed the moment when he shared with his girlfriend Lucy the pain he must be causing his family who have been searching for him, all the while he’s living a privileged existence in Australia. It was really a beautiful moment. The moment where he arrives to his old home, and then sees his mother for the first time since he was five was overwhelming. I am not ashamed to say that I sobbed. Patel brings this story to life and makes it so special that I thought I was watching the moment of reunion in real-time, rather than a theatrical representation. Patel has truly earned his nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Words must also be said about Kidman, who has earned herself a nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well. She plays a beautiful, loving mother who adores her children. Her role seems very supporting indeed, right up until the moment Patel shows up at home, worried about his ill mother. And then suddenly, Kidman transforms. She shines, she shows up, she brings it, she does all the things, however you want to describe it. Up until this point in the film, the most I noticed about Kidman was her deeply unfortunate 1980’s hair. I’m fairly certain she earned her nomination based on a whopping five minutes on-screen with Patel, explaining her decision to adopt. Although she is crying, she’s not distracting, she’s adding to the moment. I want to keep watching her cry; it’s elegant. I haven’t always been a Kidman fan, but in this film I certainly was.
It’s likely that I’m not inducing any tears in this review because I actually don’t have the words to describe how breathtaking this film is. The writing is amazing, the cinematography is fantastic (amazing shots of India? Yes please.), the acting is out of this world, and the story itself is gut wrenching and rewarding and hopeful and inspiring and…and…and…and.
I can no longer wax poetic. Please go and see this movie.