Emotional yet aloof

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2017)

Going into an 'Oscar baity' film during the Oscars winter season is always an experiment: is this going to be one that will allow you to fully immerse yourself into the fibre of the story or will you be severely frustrated by all the teary closeups followed by the string score? Lion, for better of for worse, does both. The first half of the film is absolutely splendid. Raw, poignant, emotional. It has it all. A fabulous lead actor in the young Sunny Pawar and a heart-wrenching story to go with him. Things go a bit wonky once the film shifts time and place to Australia.
While Dev Patel is splendid here, after Sunny's performance, it is difficult for him to live up to what has been presented. Rooney Mara is excellent, albeit rather tangential (potentially, actually unnecessary as a character). And that is where the problems lie. That strained relationship they have is just not meshing well. It does not progress the story anywhere. There are glimmers of hope in that Australian section, though. The dinner scene when Patel's character has a fit and Nicole Kidman, playing his adoptive mother, has one of the most expressive 30 second performances seen in a long time. Her "big scene" is also quite good but was too much of a tear-jerker moment for my taste.
From the technical side - the cinematography is excellent (again, especially in the first part of the film), and the original score is mesmerising and gives a wholly new dimension to the film. The bottom line is that this film is all well-intentioned, and that is the problem probably with it. It veers on the edge of being fully committed to the story and characters, but then kind of drifts away to be "a film". Basically, it is overly obvious and cliché at times. And I bet that the real-life story was not a cliché at all. The film just does not fully realise itself as an excellent one. A good film, definitely. A very good film, surely. But not an excellent one.