"LION" | little sunny overshadows dev
Apart from the all-encompassing luminosity of little Sunny Pawar – so young yet so wise – the one aspect of this soul-stirring journey into the incandescent side of the diaspora is just how Indian at heart is this film about a boy from a remote village in India adopted by an Australian couple.
Lion plays with the idea of a duality in self-identity, and in the cultural spiritual and geographical existence for its protagonist Saroo with an enrapturing earnestness. Davis and his writer Luke Davis walk that extra mile to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the diasporic heart.
The film is unabashedly sentimental and, dare one say, unapologetically manipulative, specially in the first hour of playing-time when little Saroo is lost to the world. His world of his mother (Priyanka Bose) and his elder brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate).
The images of little Saroo racing in an empty train that hurls him into the unknown, and then trying to find his way through the cold almost impersonal crowds of Kolkata, are profoundly moving. The lost child is a distant cousin of Chetan Anand’s ‘Aakhri Khat’, although he doesn’t even know it.
Cinematographer Greig Fraser’s view of Kolkata is very different from the way the city was shot in Roland Joffee’ “City Of Joy” 25 years ago. There is more of everything in the Kolkata of Lion, including corruption, debauchery and child abuse. The images of little Saroo trying to survive in the pitiless city are harrowing and magnificent.
Occupying centre-stage in this dark and desperate world of poverty is little Saroo played with such intuitive wisdom by Sunny Pawar that he makes all the acting schools of the world appear redundant. The film is edited so severely you feel it’s exercising a savage economy over Saroo’s emotional spaces. Garth Davis makes sure there is nothing over-done in the presentation.
Nonetheless we wait for Saroo to journey back to his village in Madhya Pradesh to be united with his biological mother, only to be deeply let down by the hammy reunion sobs and atrocious old lady’s makeup of Priyanka Bose.
From the Indian cast, Tannishta Chatterjee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui fare much better in spite of their brief roles. But without a shadow of doubt Lion belongs to little Sunny Pawar. Impressive even awe-inspiring, Lion is a film that will stay with you for a long time.
