Lion follows the life of Saroo, a young boy living in India with his older brother, younger sister and mother. They are poor but happy, and Saroo looks up to his older brother and wants to do everything that he does. One day, Saroo loses track of his brother and wanders onto a decommissioned train while looking for him. The train begins to move, and before he knows it Saroo is lost in a foreign Indian city completely isolated from everything that he is familiar with. Later on, the movie jumps ahead to Saroo when he is a young adult, having been adopted by an Australian couple. He begins to feel that something is missing in his life, and starts being plagued by memories of his childhood. He decides to use Google Earth to track down his old village and connect with his past.
This film certainly delivers an original, moving story that is quick to enthrall audiences. The first half of the movie that follows Saroo as a young boy in India was especially riveting. Sunny Pawar absolutely shines and is the true standout here. The rest of the cast also had great performances for their respective characters, and I really connected with their emotions surrounding the plot. I also want to point out just how good a job this film did in portraying Indian culture. The first half of the movie is entirely in subtitles, but this had absolutely no negative impact on the experience of watching Lion. If anything, I think it helped add an element of genuineness to the story. This aspect, along with the unfiltered visuals of Indian streetchildren, massive throngs of train commuters, Saroo and his family laboriously collecting rocks, all made this film seem real and captured the life of an Indian boy's experiences through his eyes.
Now I'll move on to what did not work for me with Lion. Although the first part of the film was extremely well done, towards the middle it began to lose me. When the storyline jumps to Saroo as an adult, the plot just begins to grind to a halt. What partly caused this was the complete unraveling of Saroo as he becomes overcome with the memories of his childhood. He essentially goes mad, becoming consumed with finding his childhood home. It gets to a point where his reaction becomes unbelievable; I understand why he wants to discover his past, but he goes so far as to quit his job, disown his brother, and completely cut off his parents and girlfriend. I just felt that his reaction was unwarranted for the situation he was in.
The bottom line here is that Lion is a solid motion picture that I was overall pretty satisfied with. It left a few things to be desired, but I can see why it was nominated for Best Picture for the 2016 Academy Awards. Despite the few problems that I did have with this film, I would recommend giving Lion a watch if you get the chance.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 120 minutes
Release Date: November 25, 2016
My Rating: ★★★☆☆
