Nicole Kidman, if unfortunate, right now, the "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar must be hers to lose.

Rating: 9/10 (12 February 2017)

Real stories of a somebody-got-famous are a dime in a dozen and about a thousand in couple of thousand in Cinema history. But the one in this film, involves no one you've ever heard of, doesn't star a soul you'll recognise for its first 40 minutes, and will rip you into a thousand pieces before it's over. "Lion" tells the story of a lost boy: a five-year-old Indian called "Saroo," who grew up in the 1980s in the area around Khandwa. The film begins with him pilfering lumps of coal off a train with his older brother, "Guddu," and selling them to buy food. By the end of the first reel, these two are thousands of miles apart, wholly by mistake.
Left sleeping one night on a railway station bench, Saroo woke up alone and scared, and stumbled onto a decommissioned passenger train. Before he knew it, he was speeding his way to Calcutta, with no one to help, no Bengali to explain, and a place name for his home town that no one at the other end recognised. This is a true story; a pretty inspiring and incredible one at that. It's a story of two halves, the first half full of the colour and drama of young Saroo's Indian childhood, with the second half (covering the adoption by a compassionate Sue and her husband John; Portrayed by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham respectively) focusing on the psychological toll of dislocation and loss of identity. Handled with intelligence and subtlety, this is a powerfully engaging drama.
The excellent script, by the Australian writer Luke Davies, sticks rigidly to Saroo's own point of view as days, months, and eventually whole decades elapse with him effectively orphaned through freak circumstance. It's derived from a 2012 memoir by the grown Saroo Brierley, called A Long Way Home. He can only imagine the agony his mother and brother must have gone through, endlessly searching. So twenty five years later, armed with only a handful of memories, his unwavering determination, and a revolutionary technology known as Google Earth, he sets out to find his lost family and finally return to his first home. While Rooney Mara has a fairly limited function as Saroo's girlfriend, Nicole Kidman enriches the film enormously. It's a sterling, supportive performance by Kidman (who is one of my most favourite actresses).
The script never lunges for cheap drama by forcing Saroo into a binary choice between mothers, and the most complex beats are about tip- toeing around, often counter-productively, to avoid hurt or betrayal.
Patel in a role (and film) which infinitely improve on his breakthrough in Slumdog Millionaire. But Nicole Kidman is a fascinatingly strained figure, often barely keeping her grip. Right now, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar must be hers to lose.