Genre: Drama
Directed: Garth Davis
Stars: Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Divian Ladwa, Abhishek Bharate, Priyanka Bose, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sachin Joab, Pallavi Sharda
Production: See-Saw Films
Born in rural destitution, the 5-year-old Saroo followed his older brother to the local railway station one night. He fell asleep in a train car, and woke up 900 miles away edging towards the bustling city of Calcutta. After weeks of scavenging for scraps near the rails, Saroo was brought to a center for abandoned children and quickly adopted by a an Australian couple who raised and took care of him for 25 years.
Can we all agree, no child should be subjected to this kind of poverty |
Yet despite the story's obvious appeal and the anchored authority of it being true, there's still something about Lion that rings a hollow note. Part of might have something to do with director Garth Davis's approach to the material. As a fairly green feature length director, Davis injects the screen with liberal amounts of stylistic bravado, as if to show the audience what he as a storyteller can do. He uses a host of not just visual motifs but story devices to achieve his ends including prolonged fever dreams of the older Saroo (Patel), struggling with the penumbras of his young brother Guddu (Bharate) desperately searching for him. This of course is all set to a score that plucks on the heart strings like the licks of a wistful sitar.
It's dapper film work to be sure, but it does surprisingly little as world building technique. That problem that is compounded when the young Saroo (Pawar) travels to Australia to meet his new parents (Kidman and Wenham). The camera likes to doddle on Saroo gingerly touching a TV for the first time and seeing a full fridge for the first time and ignores the multitude of micro-expressions that the cast is trying convey. At many points Lion felt less like a movie about people than about moving parts.
Come to me my children... |
Yet every time Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara transcend to do some of their most compelling work, we're once again distracted by the shorthand version of truly effective film making. Sadly at these moments, you become aware that you're not watching the best version of this story but merely an inauthentic distillation. A white dude's version, of a white dude's script adapted for white people looking for the same high they got watching Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
Unfortunately Lion leaves a little too much to be desired as a cinematic experience. It dances frustratingly close to the edge of being not just good but great, but ultimately leans on cliche and hackneyed movie-of-the-week dramatics to pull its story through. Those inclined to see Lion, should definitely wait through the credits. Surprisingly you get more of an emotional payoff watching the Brierley family home videos than you do watching everything else.
Final Grade: C+
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