[yasr_overall_rating]
A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Garth Davis’ “Lion” (adapted from the book “A Long Way Home”) is a true story about a five-year-old Indian boy, Saroo, who ends up over a thousand miles away from his Hindi home. He is utterly lost and nearly invisible in a place where he doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t know his mother’s real name or any solid information concerning the spreadsheet contents of his life. And after a few dangerous encounters and a stint in an orphanage, he finds himself adopted by a middle class Australian couple. Life settles, life is good and going smoothly until memory is triggered and the need to no longer be lost is all consuming.
The thought of my mother just being absent from my line of vision in a grocery store was terrifying enough for me at five. I can still feel the panic grip me, a flurry of thoughts rushing through my head, sounds growing sharper and louder, and people suddenly seeming like giants. The doom grows heavy like a boulder in your stomach. And of course that doom evaporates as soon as your mother reappears just as quickly as she disappeared telling you to stop fooling around, ignorant to the fleeting existential situation that was developing.
For Saroo, there was no fleeting moment, that peculiar existential situation took root. There is no longer just the situation of being lost but that of “loss.” Loss of identity, becoming shadow, a mere silhouette, until a makeshift identity can be prepared. “Lion,” is not a story unique for just it being a story of a boy lost via unusual circumstance, or simply surviving (although that in itself is an amazing) but it is unique because he finally finds home 25 years later. He is no longer lost.
Sunny Pawar is Young Saroo, innocent and full of all the charisma of an affecting and charming child while clear of the affectations that are common with child actors. And Dev Patel is striking in his performance as an older Saroo, fully immersed in the language and culture of his adoptive Australian home. Patel is finally able to take his acting abilities to the next level with a more emotionally complex role. You feel the struggle as he grapples with his character’s identity as authentically as you feel the innocence of Sunny Pawar’s performance. It’s his best role to date. The film itself may lie within the safe bounds of convention, but I don’t really care because “Lion” is one of the most deeply moving films of the year. It gets into your head and makes you feel with a capital F.
You feel the primal fear and panic of Saroo as he’s lost and encounters a world where love and kindness is sparse and treachery is always lingering closely behind. You feel the pain of his mother and siblings, of their loss, and you feel the heady mix of comfort and confusion as Saroo is introduced to a new world with a new family. The weight of “loss” is ever-present throughout the film, but it is not the end all and be all as there is also resolution and rejoicing.
In theaters Sunday, December 25th
