Siraj Syed reviews Lion: Soaring emotions, roaring cinema

Lion is the tale of mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, separation and unification, brimming with humanity, and yet not fighting shy of tilting the camera down, to capture the grim realities of crime and perversion in a cruel and miserable world. All those who frown upon technology as the bane of the 21^st century, here’s a glorious tribute to the great service it can and is meant to render, and does, as evidenced in the film.

For a rather well-made film, based on a true story, the makers have done disservice to their cause by naming it Lion. It is neither a Disney-inspired cartoon, nor the story of a real lion (captive or free), nor about any lion-hearted human, not even about the Lions Club! So, don’t be confused by the title, which is a semi-literal translation of Sheru, the birth-name of the lead character, and do see this heartfelt bio-pic, among the best of the year.

From a Golden Lion, at Cannes, in 2008, to this rivetting feature-film debut, eight years later, director Garth Davis, has, indeed come ‘a Long Way Home’, not unlike the title of the autobiography the movie is based on. Which of the six Oscar nominations will it win at the 89^th Academy Awards? And what inspired an Screen Australia to make a film on the life of a Khandwa (Madhya Pradesh) born little boy, who found himself alone on the merciless by-lanes of Calcutta, 1,600 km away from home, in 1986?

In 1986, Saroo (Sunny Pawar), the 5-year old son of a doting stone-quarry labourer mother (Priyanka Bose), lives with his elder brothers Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) and Kallu, and younger sister Shekila, in a village in Khandwa, Central India. Guddu and Saroo steal coal from freight trains, to afford milk and food. One day Saroo follows his brother to a late-night foray, and they arrive at a nearby train station, where Saroo decides to stay back and take a nap. When Guddu does not return till late, Saroo searches for him, and boards a train, presuming Guddu is aboard. He falls asleep again, in one of the compartments, and wakes up to find the train in motion, with no one on-board, and the door locked from the outside.

After a couple of days, he finds himself in faraway Calcutta, where he doesn't understand the local Bengali language. He narrowly escapes being kidnapped by a gang of child-traffickers, and realises just in time, that the apparently well-intentioned benefactress, who has taken him in, Noor (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is in cahoots with an evil man called Ram (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Surviving the metropolis’s sleazy under-belly, lands up in a hell-hole of an orphanage, where children are treated as slaves, and apparently not only of the menial kind. A social-worker called Mrs. Sood (Deepti Naval) tries hard to trace his family, but when all efforts fail, she sends him to Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, where he is adopted by Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John Brierley (David Wenham), where he slowly starts to settle in. Years pass by, but Saroo (now Dev Patel)’s yearning for his family and village only becomes stronger.

The real Saroo Brierley has penned his heart-wrenching autobiography, first published under the title, A Long Way from Home, in association with Larry Buttrose. After it was filmed, a fresh edition of the book was launched, with the eponymous title, and Dev Patel on the cover (Penguin). With a subject as powerful as this, overflowing emotional lava, it needed a truly proficient screen-writer, to condense, adapt and create worthy mise-en-scène. And who did the producers pick? An Australian genius, poet and author, who had earlier co-written the screenplay for his own novel, Candy, starring Heath Ledger. His name is Luke Davies, and his first solo outing has brought him an Oscar nomination!

Strange is the world of make-believe! Where one must give credit to the writer and director for their vision and empathy, one is also constrained to point out that clichés are not altogether absent from the film. The clap-trap police-robber train chase and the recurring dream trope, for example. Another little ‘debit’ is that the effort to seamlessly blend Hindi, Bengali and English, with evocative silences, and with no sub-titles, begins to show on a few occasions. That having been said, Lion is a tour-de-force that spans a whole universe of behaviour delineation, from the spunk of little Saroo, to the heart-melting plight of the mother, to the bonding between the family and later within a class of children that can best be described as Les Misérables, to the pointer at the unmentionable fates India’s kidnapped and lost children suffer, to the inherent goodness of a few of us, who make a strong case against despondency.

Hauschka and Dustin O'Halloran’s background music team creates a variety of moods and an apt theme song, but sometimes begins to take a life of its own, outside the narrative. Greig Fraser’s handling of the camera, and Alexandre de Franceschi’s artistry with the scissors, are both consummate and captivating. Casting and performances are veritable coups, though I am not going to refrain from repeating that Nawazuddin Siddiqui is becoming too predictive to sustain his reputation as one of Hindi cinema’s most versatile actors. In the true tradition of Salaam Bombay and Slumdog Millionaire, here comes another boy wonder: Sunny Pawar. Confidence, poise, command...boy, can this Mumbai boy act!

Coming out of the shadow of Slumdog, predictable piece of casting Dev Patel (The Last Air-Bender, The Man Who Knew Infinity, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) proves that he has finally come of age. At 26, it was about time too. Stock-in-trade mannersims are reined-in, though he is still just that bit awkward in the intimate scenes. Saroo’s screen girl-friend Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Carol, Her) finds herself in routine cinematic situations, till she lights up the screen with a fleeting hide-and-seek shot that will be long remembered also as a Davis and Davies special.

Nicole Kidman lives the role, though David Wenham (Australia, Van Helsing, 300) is somewhat affected. Priyanka Bose (referred to in the film only as Ammi-‘Mummy’, but Kamla Munshi in reality) breathes life into a role that is a veritable ode to Indian motherhood, Tannishtha is wasted in a stock role, while Deepti Naval gets to portray Saroj Sood, the founder of the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption, and does so with a touch of dignity. Very good to good support comes from Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Keshav Jadhav, Benjamin Rigby, Riddhi Sen, Kaushik Sen, Menik Guneratne, Rita Boy, Khushi Solanki, Shankar Nisode, Udayshankar Pal, Shurojit Das and Emilie Cocquerel.

Lion is a lion of a film. You need not be lion-hearted to enjoy it. Just having a heart will do.

P.S.: Addiction to applications is a common illness among some millions of lap-toppers, tablet-toters and over-the-top phone phoneys. And yet, this is one time nobody will begrudge giving huge credit to an Internet application (app) called Google Earth. If it could do what it did for Sher Khan/Sheru/Saroo, imagine how useful a tool it could be in finding those who were loved and lost, or those who were simply lost, in this big, bad, mad world.

Rating: ****

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw11C7rF3Ws