Just in time to qualify for Oscar consideration, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the independent film gurus, released Lion. An Oscar nomination is quite possible for star Dev Petal with longshot chances for Rooney Mara or Nicole Kidman.
Lion (Dev Petal, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, Sunny Pawar) – A movie for independent film buffs, Lion is a journey based on a true story. Set in India for the first hour and the Australian island of Tasmania for most of the second, Lion tells the story of a five-year-old who falls asleep on a train and wakes up in Calcutta. After living in the streets for a time, he ends up in an orphanage, eventually landing with an Australian family. Twenty years later, he decides to find his long-lost mother and brother.
Ah, if the story were that simple. A foreign language film for that first hour, we get to know this really cute, confident kid, Saroo (Sunny Pawar), and his brother, Guddo. Because he is only five, Saroo really doesn’t know where he’s from or how either to get back there or describe it. His village doesn’t seem to exist. When finally he is taken in at the orphanage, it is clear that Saroo will never get home. Once placed (and a hour later in film time), he is taken to Australia where he meets his new, wonderful, well-to-do parents, Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham).
Flash forward 20 years: Saroo (Dev Petal) is a handsome, strapping 25-year-old who enrolls in a class to learn hotel management (after all, he started in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). There, he meets a beautiful American classmate, Lucy (Rooney Mara), and falls in love.
But something is missing. Home beckons. He sets out using the new Google Earth technology to retrace his steps and try to find that little village and family in the middle of nowhere. Warning: Spoiler Alert. It probably is not a stretch to figure out that he will succeed; otherwise, why would they have made this movie?
The fact that it takes an hour before we meet the stars, Dev Petal, Rooney Mara, and Nicole Kidman, is a problem. The journey to Australia is amazing, scary, and heartbreaking but it doesn’t need to take 60 minutes. Cut this by 20-25 minutes, get us to Australia, and center the film on Saroo’s compelling need to find his family and you have an award-winning film.
As it is, Lion is really good. It is just way too long. The first-time feature director, Garth Davis, just makes the rookie mistake of falling in love with his own work. But his casting is excellent, the performances are outstanding, and the cinematography is incredible. However, the soundtrack is annoying — all piano and strings — and adds to the somniferous pace of the film.
There is every reason for indie fans to like Lion. Most of you will fall in love with the little kid and be enthralled with Petal, Rooney and, to a lesser extent, Kidman. But for the average moviegoer, this is likely to feel like a slog albeit with a happy ending.