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Dev Patel searches for his past in Lion |
Director: Garth Davies
Cast: Sunny Pawar (Young Saroo), Dev Patel (Saroo Brierley),
Rooney Mara (Lucy), Nicole Kidman (Sue Brierley), David Wenham (John Brierley),
Abishek Bharate (Guddu), Divina Ladwa (Mantosh Brierley), Priyanka Bose (Kamla Munshi),
Seepti Naval (Saroj Sood)
In 1986, Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is accidentally separated from
his brother Guddu (Abishek Bharate) and mother (Priyanka Bose) after being
trapped on a train that travels 1,600km to Calcutta. Unable to find his way
home, and dodging the dangers of Calcutta’s streets, he eventually ends up in
an orphanage. He is adopted by an Australian couple, the Brierleys (fine and
tender performances Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). Twenty years later, a
chance meeting with a group of Indian students brings Saroo’s (Dev Patel)
memories flooding back– and dedicates himself to retracing his steps and
finding his family in India.
Lion is an
overlong expansion of a story that would really spark your interest when
presented in a newspaper article. But Garth Davies’ film drains the dramatic
life out of the story by ludicrously overextending the telling in order to try
and eke as much emotion from the audience as possible. Lion is under two hours, but it really should be at most an hour
and a half.
The problem is the central section in Australia, while our
hero tries to locate his roots. It just isn’t quite interesting enough, despite
sterling, committed and emotional work from Dev Patel. Put simply, even with an
extraordinary story like this, the film can’t help but communicate Sarro’s
obsessions through cinema’s clichés. So we get a madness board with pins and
bits of string to link clues. We get Saroo increasingly dishevelled. We get him
driving away family and girlfriend. We get moody, tearful glances into the
middle distance. Even the final solution to the mystery occurs after a spark of
inspiration during a rage fuelled “I’m going to wreck this board and give up”
moment. This whole section just serves to reduce the story into
movie-of-the-week territory.
The film just doesn’t quite connect with us as it should.
Perhaps because of the amount of time given over to very slow Google Earth
searches, or overblown camera tracking shots across train lines, or expansive
slow, piano-scored moments of emotional torment from Saroo. It’s a shame
because there are flashes of good material in there – Nicole Kidman’s has a
stand out scene to explain why she chose not to have children – and Dev Patel
is the best he’s been. But it doesn’t quite work. After Saroo’s emotional
revelation at an Indian friend’s house and realisation that he is “lost” (and
this quiet devastation from Patel is affecting), the story doesn’t really kick
off. It just slows down.
It’s a shame as the opening third of the film with young
Saroo lost in Calcutta is very well done, even if it seems virtually every male
living on the streets is a paedophile. The early scenes with Saroo and his
brother are very good, and establish the strength of their bond. Sunny Pawar
does a marvellous job as the lost boy, and Garth Davies films Calcutta with an
earthy realism, as well as having a wonderful sense of empathy for the
vulnerability of children. It’s also striking to see how uncommented upon a
child alone on the streets of Calcutta goes. The dangers Saroo dodges feel
genuinely threatening, and helps us invest emotionally for the rest of the
film.
The moments that flash back to this do get overplayed later.
Much as I initially liked Saroo hallucinating his brother and mother appearing
around him in the streets of Melbourne, it’s a card that quickly gets overused.
Like many of the ideas in this film, it gets hammered home a little too much.
It’s that whole middle section, with poor Rooney Mara saddled with the
thankless part of supportive girlfriend. You could have cut it down by 20
minutes and had the same impact. Garth Davies’ direction simply gets carried
away with the lyrical sadness, to try and tug our heartstrings.
The problem is the most moving part of the film is the final
sequence where we see the real people meeting in the streets of Khandwha.
Nothing else in the film really measures up to this genuine emotion.
Particularly after we’ve watched a man searching Google and behaving moodily
for well over forty minutes. It’s a film that loses its way because it’s
moments of emotional reality like that which make these stories truly profound
– and a dramatisation can never provide that. With the film also unable to find
a way to make the search as dramatic and engaging as the getting lost and being
found, it also flounders in the middle, taking way too long to get us to the
destination. It’s got its moments, but it’s
a well assembled film that outstays its welcome.
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