Lion (2016)

User Review

• 

  thegeniuslizard

  6 / 10

  After being separated from his biological family, a boy (Pawar, Patel) was adopted and raised by an Australian couple (Kidman, Wenham), and twenty-five years later, has decided to search for his long lost loved ones. And there's only one thing that could help him: Google Earth.
  
  The first half of "Lion" focuses on young Saroo, where we meet him in Kwandha with his mother and older brother. Despite his young age, he helps his family in completing chores and gaining income. But one day, he accidentally disembarks to Calcutta - and we see him learn to survive alone in streets and slums - director Garth Davis and cinematographer Greig Fraser imbue Saroo's world with a dismal yet delicate touch of magic in reality, involving themes of adoption and identity. Not to mention some of the dreary, blurry and haunting imageries in India.
  
  Played incredibly-well by Pawar, but later on Patel, we can feel the complexity and melancholy of the central protagonist as he struggles to find his home, identity and family.
  
  But Lion's first half is so exceptional, that the rest of the film cannot match it. It runs out of steam when the story shifts to old Saroo during its second half. There's two subplots involving his love interest (Mara) and troubled brother (Landwa), whom feel wasted and under-utilized in superfluous roles for the storyline.
  
  VERDICT: By its first half, Lion is a portrait of the important themes in life, which struggles to comprehend along when the second half comes.

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