The opposite of Hakuna Matata

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2017)

It's important to remember there are orphans in mainstream cinema who aren't whiny superheroes. Indeed, as Lion's sobering closing title card reminds us, over 80,000(!) children go missing in India alone every year - a staggering figure that makes the story of one who found his way home to his family all the more incredible. Saroo Brierly's story is too irresistibly moving to ever dismiss; however, it's unfortunate that its cinematic telling stumbles in properly doing it justice. Despite many promising attributes, Lion falls prey to a glut of unwarranted Oscar bait clichés, making the 'so-incredible-it-feels-like-a-movie' tale feel disappointingly artificial when told in feature film form.
Lion will invariably suffer from a spate of Slumdog Millionaire comparisons, which aren't as reductionist as you'd expect. Nonetheless, debut director Garth Davis could have taken notes in how to convey heavy content with the pizazz and massive heart of his film's begrudging predecessor, as his film plays as too overlong, stagey, and glum to properly stand out by comparison. Still, Luke Davies' otherwise clumsy screenplay makes one bold choice that pays off: unfolding Saroo's 'there and back again' linearly, rather than disrupted by traditional, hackneyed Hollywood flashbacks. This two-act structure forces us to empathize with the sheer enormity - emotional and geographic - of his journey, building up to a climactic emotional payoff that feels exhaustively earned.
The first half, a near-silent parable of a young Saroo, disoriented, wandering across India, and besieged by countless unscrupulous, predatory individuals, grimly sketches the film's social consciousness and horrific climate of missing/abducted children. Poignantly severe as it is, the segment's length, aimless editing, and wordless lugubriousness still toe the line of being an episodic downer parade. Thankfully, Davis cleverly takes the Life is Beautiful route, filtering the looming evils through the cheerful shambling of its child protagonist. It works, as luminous newcomer Sunny Pawar, bursting with a quirky, Charlie Chaplin charisma, carries the first act masterfully, captivating with his wary but unquenchably chipper perseverance every step of the way.
The film's second half, housing the bulk of the narrative, is more of a slog. Initially, Davis ably conveys the brittle social dynamics of Saroo's adoption process, including the unforeseen pain of an adopted brother struggling to integrate and prone to fits of self-harm. Similarly, Saroo's subsequent disinterested 'third culture kid' identity ("you still like cricket?" "Yeah, but I cheer for the Aussies, mate") feels commendably real. Disappointingly, the script's set up for Saroo's central conflict is far from as finely honed. The tricky thing about PTSD is that, distressingly real as it is, it's hard to depict cinematically without it reading as wholly disingenuous, and Davis flounders somewhat to dredge up the urgency and emotional resonance in Saroo's triggered fixation with his past. Instead, we get pockets of cumbersome, frustratingly Oscar-baiting dialogue that brandish the film's themes with the subtlety of a cricket bat upside the head, including multiple superfluous exposition-fights with Saroo's girlfriend (Rooney Mara; capable but somewhat glassy-eyed in an underwritten support/indignation sounding board archetype). Increasingly, this second act involves watching an increasingly sulky and hairy Dev Patel loom over a laptop (and the fawning introduction of Google Earth - "have you heard about this fantastic new program?" is about as instantly dated as Chef's love letter to Twitter in 2014) - or worse: one of those splashy CSI-style map-pin-boards that seem to only exist in Hollywood detective fantasies.
Davis does his best to counteract the stagnation with Google Earth footage turning into sweeping, gorgeous panoramic shots of beautifully lush Tasmania, and the arid, frustratingly elusive Indian countryside. Where Lion really excels beyond its central performances is in its ability to astutely capture a location's sensory details, with snippets of birdsong, local music, background banter, and cameras prowling as relentlessly as the titular predator lapping up the sights, sounds, and even smells of its two locales. This attention to detail is appropriate - after all, it's a sugary dessert that triggers Saroo's first childhood PTSD flashback - but it lends a welcome degree of authenticity and immediacy to a film otherwise scrambling to conjure such qualities.
None of this is not to disparage Patel's excellent performance, as his furious, manic compulsion to reconcile the two halves of his life is commanding and fiercely believable, and the perfect counterbalance to the jauntier Pawar as his younger self. It's more a shame that the film's script and direction can't meet him at his level of intensity, as he's hauntingly human enough that we want to ache for Saroo's hardship, only to snapped out of Patel's magnetism by the frequent contrivance of the words that tumble out of his mouth. This is a fate that Nicole Kidman and David Wenham, as Saroo's adoptive parents, also struggle valiantly to combat through their honest and warm performances. Davies is mostly careful to position them gracefully and carefully, eschewing white saviour overtones by concentrating on their tentative but teeming love for their new family, and leaving Kidman only a single teary Oscar-flirting monologue. Their scenes are still a touch rosy-tinted, but the cabal of talent between them help make their thoroughly scripted exchanges play as raw and natural.
Slow, disordered, and frustratingly cliché-peppered as it may be, Lion still serves as an emotional venus flytrap, pouncing with a (somewhat rushed) finale sure to leave even the most scornful skeptics misty-eyed - even its title drop is an rousing slam dunk. Nonetheless, the film's most moving moment is its closing credits' documentary footage of its real life personages interacting - tearful, gauche, but devastatingly authentic. Often, fictional filmmaking is championed for evoking a true story's inherent emotions more vividly than talking head anecdotal recreations. Lion, despite its promising attributes and visceral leading performances, is a strong testament to the contrary: sometimes such remarkable stories are better avoided by major studios, and told by those involved.
-7/10