Lion
26/07/17 Filed in: Wimblington Film Club
I help run a film club in a nearby village and yesterday we screened Lion, a film that I didn't get to see when it was released. It was well reviewed so I didn't expect to be disappointed, and more importantly I didn't want our film club audience to be disappointed. They weren't. As if to validate all the good reviews, our audience clapped at the end of the film and a number of people thanked me for showing it.
It is a wonderful film in many ways. It shows the happiness of two brothers, Saroo and Guddu, who are living in what we would describe as extreme poverty in India. The film begins with them stealing coal from a slowly moving train, which they later trade for milk. A small luxury that they take back to their mother, who promptly gives each of them a drink from it. When Saroo talks his elder brother into taking him into a nearby town, where there is work, this sets of a series of events that will change Saroo's life. Tired from their trip, Saroo falls asleep on the railway platform. When he awakes Gaddu is nowhere to be seen. Saroo searches a train but having not found Gaddu, falls asleep again. When he awakes the train is in motion and he can't get off. In fact he doesn't get off until the train arrives in Calcutta, some 1600 km from his home. As a Hindi speaker he is not understood by the local Bengalis.
The risks to an unaccompanied child in Calcutta are great, and Saroo has a couple of close shaves before ending up in an orphanage, from where he is adopted by a couple from Tasmania, Sue and Joe Brierley. They also later adopt a second Indian boy, Mantosh, but whereas Saroo is quiet and reasonably accepting of his new life, Mantosh appears to be more damaged psychologically, and is very disruptive.
The film then jumps forwards some twenty years to when the two boys are young men. Saroo is studying for hotel management while Mantosh is a loner, staying away from the family home to avoid upsetting people. Saroo meets Lucy, another student, who's from America. They start a relationship and it's while they're having a meal with some friends that Saroo comes across jalebi, a delicacy that triggers memories from childhood. This event awakens in him a need to search for his biological mother, and his brother, realising that both must have suffered terrible anguish from not knowing what had happened to him. Using Google earth and calculations to try to assess how far he travelled on the train, he tries to recognise his birthplace. He keeps this from his adoptive mother, Sue, not wishing to appear ungrateful. But by isolating himself from Sue he causes even more hurt, while his relationship with Lucy falls apart as he becomes totally absorbed in his search.
He appears to be almost at the point of giving up when he recognises what he thinks are hills near to where he was born. From there he navigates to the station where he was separated from Gaddu, and then it isn't difficult to find his village. The area is known as Ganash Talai, but when he was lost all those years before he said he was from Ginestlay, a corruption of the actual name that nobody recognised. Saroo finally tells Sue why he has been so distant, and she is totally supportive as he sets off to find his mother.
This film is all the more enthralling when you realise that it is true. The cinematography in India during the opening part of the film is amazing, with the atmosphere of Calcutta as viewed by the very young Saroo wonderfully captured, and very frightening from that perspective. The love of the adoptive parents is inspiring, especially their strength in persevering with Mantosh, who was clearly a very troubled boy. And the conflict experienced by Saroo as he balanced the great love for his adoptive mother against his feelings for his mother back in India. A dramatic soundtrack adds the final touches.
Depending on your emotional disposition a handkerchief may be needed.
He appears to be almost at the point of giving up when he recognises what he thinks are hills near to where he was born. From there he navigates to the station where he was separated from Gaddu, and then it isn't difficult to find his village. The area is known as Ganash Talai, but when he was lost all those years before he said he was from Ginestlay, a corruption of the actual name that nobody recognised. Saroo finally tells Sue why he has been so distant, and she is totally supportive as he sets off to find his mother.
This film is all the more enthralling when you realise that it is true. The cinematography in India during the opening part of the film is amazing, with the atmosphere of Calcutta as viewed by the very young Saroo wonderfully captured, and very frightening from that perspective. The love of the adoptive parents is inspiring, especially their strength in persevering with Mantosh, who was clearly a very troubled boy. And the conflict experienced by Saroo as he balanced the great love for his adoptive mother against his feelings for his mother back in India. A dramatic soundtrack adds the final touches.
Depending on your emotional disposition a handkerchief may be needed.