| Lion | |
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.png) Australian release poster | |
| Directed by | Garth Davis |
| Screenplay by | Luke Davies |
| Based on | A Long Way Home bySaroo Brierley |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Greig Fraser |
| Edited by | Alexandre de Franceschi |
| Music by | |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 118 minutes[2] |
| Countries |
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| Languages | English[2] Hindi Bengali |
| Budget | $12 million[3] |
| Box office | $140.3 million[1] |
Lion is a 2016 Australianbiographicaldrama film directed byGarth Davis (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay byLuke Davies based on the 2013 nonfiction bookA Long Way Home bySaroo Brierley. The film starsDev Patel, Sunny Pawar,Rooney Mara,David Wenham, andNicole Kidman, as well as Abhishek Bharate,Divian Ladwa,Priyanka Bose,Deepti Naval,Tannishtha Chatterjee, andNawazuddin Siddiqui. It tells the true story of how Brierley, 25 years after being separated from his family inIndia, set out to find them. It was a joint production between Australia and the United Kingdom.
The film, which had its world premiere at theToronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2016, was given alimited release in North America on 25 November 2016 byThe Weinstein Company beforeopening wide on 6 January 2017. It was released in Australia on 19 January 2017 and in the United Kingdom on 20 January 2017.
Lion was well-received by critics, with praise for the acting (particularly Patel's and Kidman's), emotional weight, visuals, cinematography, and screenplay. It received sixOscar nominations at the89th Academy Awards, including forBest Picture,Best Supporting Actor (Patel),Best Supporting Actress (Kidman), andBest Adapted Screenplay. At the70th British Academy Film Awards, the film won theBAFTA Awards forBest Supporting Actor (Patel) andBest Adapted Screenplay. The film was also commercially successful, making $140 million worldwide and becoming one of thehighest-grossing Australian films of all time.
In 1986, five-year-old Saroo lives with his elder brother, Guddu; his baby sister, Shekila; and his mother inKhandwa,Madhya Pradesh,India. Guddu and Saroo steal coal from freight trains to trade for milk and food. Saroo accompanies Guddu to work overnight, and they arrive at a nearby train station, where Saroo falls asleep on a bench and is unable to find Guddu upon waking up. He searches for him on an empty train, only to fall asleep in one of the compartments and wake some time later to find the train in motion and the doors locked. After several days, the train arrives in farawayCalcutta, where Saroo does not understand the localBengali language. He tries to obtain a ticket home, but the attendant does not recognise the name of his village, which Saroo says is "Ganestalay".[4] He spends the night in the station with some street children, but is forced to flee when a group of men tries to kidnap them.
Saroo continues to wander around the city before meeting Noor, a seemingly friendly woman who takes him back to her apartment and tells him that a man named Rama will help him find his way home. Saroo escapes, sensing that Noor and Rama have sinister intentions, and evades Noor when she chases after him. After two months of living near theHowrah Bridge, Saroo is taken to the police and placed into anorphanage when authorities are unable to find his family.
An advertisement about Saroo is placed in several local newspapers. No one responds, but an Australian couple has become interested inadopting him. Saroo is taught basic English and moves toHobart,Tasmania, in 1987, under the care of Sue and John Brierley. He slowly settles into his new life. A year later, the Brierleys adopt another boy, Mantosh, who has trouble adjusting to his new home and suffers from rage andself-harm.
Twenty years later, Saroo moves toMelbourne to studyhotel management and starts a relationship with an American student, Lucy. During a meal with some Indian friends at their home where Saroo recognises a dish that he had loved as a child, Saroo reveals that he is not from Calcutta and was separated from his birth family more than 20 years earlier. His friends suggest he useGoogle Earth to search for his hometown. Saroo begins to do research, and, overwhelmed by the thought of the pain he imagines his family in India must have been feeling ever since he was lost, becomes obsessive and gradually withdraws from Lucy and his adoptive family, without telling the latter about his search for his biological family.
Eventually, after hearing his adoptive mother is not doing well because he has pulled away and Mantosh (who has substance abuse issues) has gone missing, Saroo visits her to apologise, and learns that she is not infertile, as he had always assumed, but wanted to help children in need through adoption. Feeling overwhelmed by how much more ground is left to cover in his search, one night Saroo recognises the rock formations where his mother worked and finds the area where he lived: the Ganesh Talai neighbourhood of theKhandwa district. He finally tells his adoptive mother about his search, and she fully supports his efforts.
Saroo returns to Ganesh Talai and, with the help of a local English speaker, has an emotional reunion with his biological mother and sister, but is heartbroken to learn that Guddu was hit and killed by a train the night they were separated. His mother remained in the village for the 25 years since he went missing because she never gave up hope that he would return. In addition to mispronouncing his home village's name, Saroo learns that he had also always mispronounced his own name as a child, as his biological parents named him not "Saroo" but "Sheru", meaning "lion".
An Australian film,[5]Lion is based onSaroo Brierley's memoirA Long Way Home. In an interview, screenwriterLuke Davies acknowledged the challenges of adapting a book that is primarily about an online search:
It was finding the right balance of the big cinema "no-no", which is that screens on screens is not good. Yet we felt very strongly that our situation was quite different from the usual procedural crime drama TV model, where there are a whole bunch of actors that are crammed with exposition-heavy dialogue pointing at computer screens. We felt that we were a million miles away from that. The relationship with the technology was instigated by a purely and deeply emotional drive and desire to make it to the end of the myth—to find wholeness with the reunification with the lost mother and to find out who you are.[6]
Dev Patel andNicole Kidman were cast in the film in October 2014.[7]Nawazuddin Siddiqui,Priyanka Bose,Tannishtha Chatterjee, andDeepti Naval joined the cast in January 2015;[8]Rooney Mara,David Wenham, andDivian Ladwa were cast in April;[9] andPallavi Sharda joined the cast in August.[10]
Principal photography on the film began in January 2015 inKolkata, India.[8] Filming moved toMelbourne in mid-April and then to several locations inTasmania, includingHobart.[11] Kidman filmed her scenes in Australia.[9][12]
Dustin O'Halloran andHauschka composed the film's score.[13]Sia wrote the song "Never Give Up" for the film.[14] Also included areJimmy Radcliffe's "The Sun, the Sand and the Sea", performed by Picturetone Pete, and "Urvasi Urvasi" byA. R. Rahman. Other songs featured in the film include "Blind" byHercules and Love Affair, "State of the Heart" byMondo Rock, and "The Rivers of Belief" byEnigma. In one scene, Noor sings along with "Come Closer", an iconic track from 'Disco King'Bappi Lahiri from the 1984 filmKasam Paida Karne Wale Ki.
Lion had its world premiere on 10 September 2016 at theToronto International Film Festival.[15][16][17] It served as the opening night film at theZurich Film Festival on 22 September.[18] It also screened at theLondon Film Festival on 12 October,[19] and at theHamptons International Film Festival on 7 and 8 October.[20] The film was released in the United States on 25 November 2016,[21] in Australia on 19 January 2017,[22] and in the United Kingdom on 20 January.[23] A special red carpet charity event for its Tasmanian premiere was attended by the film's subject, Saroo Brierley, and his family at theState Cinema in December 2016.[24]
The film was made available on Digital HD on 28 March 2017, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on 11 April.[25][26] It debuted at No. 10 on the Top 20 NPD VideoScan chart.[27]
Lion grossed $51 million in the United States and Canada and $88.3 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $140.1 million, against a production budget of $12 million.[1]
In its limited opening weekend in the United States and Canada, the film made $123,360 from four theatres (an average of $30,840, the highest of the weekend).[28] On the weekend of 17–19 March 2017,Lion crossed the $50 million mark at the North American box-office, becoming the fifth 2016 film among theAcademy Award for Best Picture nominees to surpass this threshold.[29]
In Australia, the film opened at number one with $3.18 million, the biggest opening ever for an Australianindie film and the fifth-biggest debut for an Australian film overall.[30] It grossed $29.6 million in the country, becoming the fifthhighest-grossing Australian film ever at the Australian box office.[31]
The film received very positive reviews, with Patel's and Kidman's performances particularly praised.[32][33][34] On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 84% of 270 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Lion's undeniably uplifting story and talented cast make it a moving journey that transcends the typical cliches of its genre."[35]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[36]PostTrak reported that 92% of audience members gave the film a rating of either "excellent" or "very good".[28]
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Brian Truitt ofUSA Today wrote: "The finale is manipulative in every way, squeezing out the emotions of the audience. ButLion's well-plotted narrative and thoughtful characters suck you in so much that the journey there is totally worth it."[37] Novelist and criticSalman Rushdie thought highly of the film, saying that, while he often lacks interest in films nominated for an Oscar, he rooted forLion and "would like it to win in every category it's nominated for and in most of the categories it isn't nominated for as well." Noting that he wept "unstoppably" while viewing the film, Rushdie said he is "frequently suspicious of Western films set in contemporary India, and so one of the things that most impressed me aboutLion was the authenticity and truth and unsparing realism of its Indian first half. Every moment of the little boy's journey rings true—not an instant of exoticism—and as a result his plight touches us all. Greig Fraser's cinematography portrays the beauty of the country, both honestly and exquisitely [...] Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, in the film's Australian second half, give wonderful performances too."[38]
Some critics mentioned that parts of the film move at a slow pace. For example,Anthony Lane ofThe New Yorker wrote: "though wrenching, there is barely enough of it to fill the dramatic space, and the second half is a slow and muted affair after the Dickensian punch of the first."[39]
Lion received sixOscar nominations at the89th Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Supporting Actor (Patel),Best Supporting Actress (Kidman), andBest Adapted Screenplay, but did not win in any of the categories. It did, however, win twoBAFTA Awards:Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Patel) andBest Adapted Screenplay. At Australia's7th AACTA Awards, the film won all twelve awards for which it was nominated, includingBest Film.[40]
two Australian films have been nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards: Lion and Hacksaw Ridge.
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