Thursday, December 29, 2016

Lion (2016)

Get out your hankies. We loved this story of a five-year-old Indian boy who gets lost very far from home, is adopted by a Tasmanian couple, and, as an adult, searches for his birth family. It really happened and, wow, it's good.

Newcomer Sunny Pawar spoke no English before he was brought on set (4000 boys auditioned) and learned a few words shooting his later scenes as the young Saroo. Dev Patel (last blogged for the comedy The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) is terrific as the intense grown-up adoptee. He worked out and bulked up, perhaps to look a bit more like writer Saroo Brierley (here's a photo), on whose memoir A Long Way Home the movie is based, and learned an Australian accent with Tasmanian dialect. The actual adoptive mother Sue Brierley was granted her request for Nicole Kidman (most recently in The Family Fang) to play her, and both Kidman and Patel are racking up nominations, as is the movie as a whole (here's my running list). Apparently Rooney Mara (last blogged and acclaimed for Carol) was planning to take a break but decided she wanted to take the part of the girlfriend when she read the script. Many other supporting actors from both hemispheres are wonderful as well.

This is the feature film directing debut of artist and commercials director Garth Davis, who did helm four episodes of the excellent mini-series Top of the Lake (2013), which took place in New Zealand and has a second season coming next year. Luke Davies adapted Saroo Brierley's 2014 book. The title of the movie is explained at the end. The various locations--rural and urban India; suburban Hobart, Tasmania; Melbourne; and more--make beautiful pictures shot by Greig Fraser (most recently photographed Foxcatcher).

Serious product placement for Google Earth pushes along the plot and evidently saved the filmmakers serious money because the corporation provided actual imagery from the time of the search, avoiding the need to create such images in visual effects.

Dustin O'Halloran (profiled in Like Crazy, also scored 19 episodes of Transparent) gives us lovely music that can be streamed from this link.

Only 85% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes? Not enough. Their audiences average 91. Do see this. I suggest it for children, too, if they're able to read subtitles and won't get nightmares about getting lost themselves. And, if you stay in your seat, you'll be treated to a song by Sia (the first song on the youtube link above) and a tiny bonus at the end of the credits.

Warning: the movie may bring on mild MPMS or Motion Picture Motion Sickness (here's the list). Take your seat as far back as you can.

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