A long way Home - Lion review

Year of release : 2016

Director : Garth Davis

Cinematographer : Greig Fraser

Cast : Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara

Genre : Drama

Get your tissues out, for this film takes you on a heartbreaking and tear jerking journey of a 5 year old Indian boy named Saroo who gets lost for decades and searches for his birth family for years on the basis of his memories as a kid and with the help of Google Earth. Garth Davis'debut Lion is inspired by the true events stated in the book, "A long way home" by Saroo Brierley. Saroo, a 5 year old boy tries to rest inside a train compartment and finds himself a thousand miles away from his home in Calcutta the next day.

The first half of the film is the selling point of the movie. It's warm, grungy and rough. The life of Saroo in India makes the character more deep and makes the audience fall in love with the character. The love that exists in their family doesn't require a lot of money. Two packs of milk and a kiss is what keeps them happy. The sacrifice and hard work of a mother, to provide food and shelter to her children is blissful to watch. The undeniable courage of a 5 year old kid, surviving the streets of Calcutta all by himself is astonishing. I, personally couldn't spend a day without the television when I was 5. The fact that Saroo was at the right place at the right time when he gets adopted by a Tasmanian family grabs you pretty hard. The question about his birth mother, his elder brother Guddu and his sister still remains. Where are they? Are they searching for him? Did they think he died? All these questions run in your mind, while we skip years into the film.

The introduction of Sunny Pawar is magnificent. The powerful performance makes you believe him throughout the first half of the film. The voice, the body language, the dialogue delivery and the expressions, everything hits the spot. The natural cuteness and naivety on the face of Sunny makes you fall in love with him in the first scene of the film. The need for his character to be a helping hand to his brother Guddu and be a man in the family at the age of 5 is quite astounding. Well, he grows up to be a handsome Dev Patel in Tasmania. Dev Patel is hands down, amazing in this film. The intensity in his acting grows as he discovers Google earth and becomes obsessed with the thought of finding his birth family. Nicole Kidman is good , yet she doesn't attract much of the attention. She gets way more screen time than she needed to.

Saroo finds his home

The cinematography of this film is brilliant. The brilliant use of aerial shots and extreme wide shots to portray Saroo's powerlessness is comendable. The colours in the first half are warm, grungy and raw that gives a particular look to the film. Whereas in the second half, the colours become blue and grey-ish and seem dull. The continuous montages of Saroo sitting on his computer, surfing through Google earth to find the railway station he was at when he got lost, is boring and uninteresting. It feels like a corporate propaganda, to some extent and this takes you out of the film a bit. The only thing that makes me sit through the second half is Dev Patel's undeniable intensity and brilliance, well that;s just me.

This film breaks my heart in the beginning and fixes it in the end. The last sequence when Saroo comes back to his birth family is heart warming. The way,his mother feels his skin, touches his face just to make sure that his son is truly back in the flesh is beautifully depicted. This film is truly gripping, inspiring and moving as it takes us through a bulk of emotions and shows us the unimaginable journey of Saroo (SHERU) Brierly.

The true reunion.

Rating : 3.9/5

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-Siddharth Padhee

Everything-Film

03-06-2020