Prepare to shed tears

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2017)

Essentially film-making is about story-telling and sometimes - as in this case - the story is so remarkable that only the fact that it is true makes it credible. In the north of India, five year old Saroo finds himself separated at night from his older brother, finds a place to sleep on an empty train, and finishes up 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away in Kolkata (Calcutta). His inability to speak the local language - he is from a Hindi-speaking part of the country while Kolkata uses Bengali - plus his young age and poor recollection of place names all render him utterly unable to find a way back to his family. Only a couple of decades later, by which time he has had an adopted childhood in Tasmania can Saroo - with the add of Google Maps - find a way of reconnecting with his past after an interval of 25 years.
Little Sunny Pawar is wonderful as the young Saroo, while Dev Patel enhances his growing reputation with a solid performance as Saroo as a young man. Nicole Kidman, as always, is excellent as Saroo's adoptive mother. First-time feature director Garth Davis delivers a fine piece of work, enhanced by location shooting in India and Australia. Only in the final seconds of the tale do we learn the reason for the title of the film. My only reservation about this worthy work is that, for all its emotional punch, it lacks a certain edge since we know how the story is going to unfold and there are no surprises along the way.
I saw the movie in my local multiplex in Harrow in north-west London and there was a certain piquancy to this, since Dev Patel was brought up in Harrow and around two-thirds of the audience were local Asians. We all took home the end of film message that in India over 80,000 children go missing each year and there are over 11 million children living on the streets.