Remarkable Tale of Love, Obsession, Guilt and Family

Rating: 10/10 (12 February 2017)

It starts with a day in the life of five-year old Saroo (Sunny Pawar): playfully following his beloved older brother Guddu along an unused stretch of rail trackage; helping him as he hustles for work; sharing a meal with his mother and family, before she has to set off to work as a laborer. Guddu plans to go off to work a long way from home, and Saroo insists on coming along. They pull into a train station late at night -- the brother heads off into the train yard to look for work, and Saroo falls asleep on the platform; when Guddu doesn't return, Saroo finds shelter in the sleeper car of a decommissioned train. Then, the train starts its deadhead move to Kolkata, some 1,000 miles away, and a remarkable story is underway.
"Lion" is one of those films that, if it were not based on a true story, might be dismissed as melodramatic fantasy. Instead, in his feature debut, director Garth Davis has created a remarkable, compelling, and deeply moving film of loss, guilt, and the ties of duty to and love of family that can lead to obsession. The first half of the film follows Saroo through the aforementioned scenes, and into the swirling mass of humanity that is Kolkata. These scenes are accomplished with a minimum of dialogue and yet are incredibly effective, thanks largely to a remarkable performance by Pawar. He immediately establishes a bond to the audience with his sweetness, intelligence, and total lack of affect, and we relate to his joys, his fears, and his remarkable defense mechanisms as he navigates dangers that he cannot possibly fully comprehend. Then, he is adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham), and the next phase of his life begins, growing up in a new culture and with an adoptive brother who, if anything, has borne even more horrific experiences than Saroo.
In some ways, much of "Lion" plays a modern-day parallel to Sanjayit Ray's masterful Apu trilogy, and Luke Davies' script anchors Saroo's quests -- both to survive and, a quarter-century later, to find his home -- in believable relationships and motivations, avoiding the temptation to ramp up the histrionics. The grounded story carries its own dramatic weight without artificial enhancement. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Pawar, Kidman and (as the grown-up Saroo) Dev Patel taking top honors. Patel's scenes with Kidman are absolutely riveting, and the final payoff is not only enormously gratifying, but dramatically well-earned.
The cinematography (Greig Fraser), editing (Alexandre de Franceschi), and score (Dustin O'Halloran and Hauschka) are also top-notch, and Davis does a remarkable job blending them to contrast the openness and freedom of Saroo's world in his hometown and on the beach in Tasmania, with the oppressive world of Kolkata and the increasingly confining mental state of his obsessive quest. Such work plainly belies the fact that this is Davis' inaugural directorial effort.
In sum, a deeply moving and effective film that readily warrants its multiple Oscar nominations (and probably should have been nominated for best director as well). "Lion" plainly stands -- along with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" and "Moonlight" as one of the three best films of 2016.