Good, but could have been great

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2017)

The gorgeous cinematography in India, and the astonishingly natural performance of little Sunny Pawar as the lost child Saroo, are worth the price of admission to Lion. As others have said here, the second half of the film, set in Australia, is a let-down. It's almost like another film. In India, Priyanka Bose is fantastic playing Saroo's desperately poor yet very loving and dignified mother, Kamla. And special mention to Abhishek Barate, as Saroo's much loved big brother Guddu, who does his best to work, with Saroo, to scrounge coal from trains to buy food for their family. Guddu might be a thief and a hustler, but he's so loving and affectionate. Barate brings a lot of heart to his scenes and has great chemistry with the child. The scenes where Saroo gets lost, alone, on a cross country train and later in the streets of Calcutta, are beautifully shot, and not excessive in scripting or soundtrack. The child Saroo is not overly cute or streetwise; but he has just enough luck and instinct to survive - I love the scene where he sneaks in to an outdoor shrine at night and steals some food offerings (after making the prayer sign) while everyone is sleeping. When he arrives in Tasmania and meets his new adoptive parents, the Brierleys, (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) I got the feeling they had no idea what Saroo had gone through, which they couldn't have. And the Brierleys' second adopted son, also an Indian orphan, is even more traumatised, although we never find out what his story is. But once we switch to the adult Saroo, the movie almost comes to a halt in its pacing. Dev Patel is quite good as adult Saroo, (although to me he doesn't resemble the boy Saroo), and his Australian accent is great. The trouble, I think, is the script, which is overly angsty, at the expense of advancing the plot. For Saroo to find an obscure village in India, using just his childhood memories and Google Earth, is a thrilling idea, but it's not well portrayed in the movie. For too many scenes, Saroo simply surfs the online maps, or moves pins around a paper map, but mostly he gets angry and frustrated and morose in his flat. And then one day, as though guided by a supernatural force, his computer mouse is directed to an obscure region of India, and in a few seconds, he's found his family home. I find this unbelievable. Maybe in real life he discovered things bit by bit, and that was impossible to portray on film? The search could have been portrayed in a more diverse way. Didn't he ask around at the orphanage he was brought to as a child? Weren't there some language and cultural clues he could have asked people about? Even the food. Couldn't he have brainstormed with his Indian student friends in Melbourne? Instead, Saroo is portrayed as working alone, and as mostly looking for the water tower that as a child he saw next to a railway station. But as a friend points out, there are many water towers in India near railway stations. Possibly thousands? The character of Saroo's love interest, Lucy (Rooney Mara), comes across as unnecessary and her scenes with Saroo are far too uninteresting. Lion is not a love story - it's the story of a lost child. Ditto Nicole Kidman's scenes. She's not bad, but she's not the focus of the film and she gets too much screen time. So to me, it's a respectable film, but falls short of excellent.