Lion (2016): Review

Lion was absolutely fantastic and almost perfect film. It brought me into the story from the very beginning and had me caring about what was going on throughout the entire thing. I never lost interest and cared about Soroo and his strugles. It was well shot, the music added to the experience, all of the acting was fantastic.



Lion follows the true story of Saroo, one of Indians Lost Boys. Young Saroo, played by Sunny Pawar,  is a five year old poor boy who find himself stuck on a decommissioned train that takes him away from his family and everything he knows, eventually leaving him wandering the streets in Calcutta. He has to learn to survive and deal with life alone until he is adopted by a couple from Australia. There, as a young man, he has to come to terms with his lost family, not knowing where he comes from but being able to remember being there, and his desire to find out what happened to the family that he became separated from. Also starring Dev Patel as Adult Saroo, and Nicole Kidman as his adoptive mother Sue Brierley.

A good portion of this movie is subtitled and part of the problem that young Saroo had when on the streets was that he only spoke Hindi in an area where a lot of people were speaking Bengali. Reading subtitles doesn't bother me or take me away from the story but may be a problem for some people, but this is an amazing movie to start with if you are not one who generally watches subtitled movies or foreign films as the story of being lost and wanting to find out your history crosses cultures. I really felt for this movie and the experiences of Saroo, especially when he was a child who knew he had a mother and siblings that cared about him and didn't know where he was, but where he didn't know enough to be able to get home.  Once the story moved to Australia, for me it was all about Nicole Kidman and her ability to get me to care about her as a mother who just wants to do well by her sons.

 

This movie is absolutely fantastic and probably the best movie I have seen in the last year. It is a drama and I spent a good portion of the movie crying, but that meant that I felt for the characters and really wanted Saroo to be alright and fine a good resolution to the situation he was in.  It is well paced and I liked how it was mainly chronological in nature with only a few flashbacks when Saroo is starting to find out about where he came from. It was easy to follow and I kept hoping that things would go well but knowing that Saroo has a long way ahead of him and that his life couldn't have been easy.

My Rating: 4-