LION - The Movie: He was given a loving home but deep inside was a burning need to find his first f
As an eternal optimist, my continual expectation is for things to turn out for the good. Despite seeing and reading heartbreaking news stories every night in newspapers or on the small screen, and every day having witnessed horrible events that are so contrary to this ideal as a former court reporter, my faith remains strong. So, when it comes to the absolute and sacrificial devotion a big brother has for his much younger sibling, I never could have imagined a love so deep would lead to such tragic consequences … sadly, this true story shows this is exactly what can happen.
Saroo and his family may be poor but their home is filled with love and joyful abandon in whatever hours they are able to share, with each member finding pleasure in the smallest things the world throws at them and discovering beauty in the magnificent simplicity of creation.
What starts out to be an innocent action – a little boy wanting to tag along with his brotherly idol and to help in whatever way possible as the older sibling ekes out a meagre living during the midnight hours in one of the poorest areas of India – turns into every mother’s living nightmare. The family live in poverty, huddled in a basic shack on a tiny village’s back streets in northern India. This single mother is too poor to send her children to school and so she toils in a construction site carrying rocks all day long while the two brothers scrounge out a bit of extra income at the same time by stealing pieces of coal from moving trains and bartering them with market sellers for packets of milk or paltry morsels of food. It’s a dangerous way to live but the only one they know. A nearby gully, with a multitude of butterflies and a small stream running through it, provides a restful respite at the end of a long day for Saroo, the littlest one – it is his favourite place and he gravitates there regularly to forget the realities of everyday life.
Guddu, who I would presume to be around thirteen years of age, can never resist the pull of five-year-old Saroo’s big brown eyes, especially when he pleads for yet another chance to spend time with his hero big brother. The unfortunate result is an exhausted child unable to stay awake when the train pulls into a deserted railway station several dozen kilometres from home a little while after the sun has disappeared for the night. Realising the little tyke needs his rest, Guddu tells Saroo to sleep on a railway bench while he goes to work, with strict instructions to stay right there and wait for him. Waking in the middle of the night, the sleepy child is disoriented and cries out for his brother to no avail. An old train carriage with an open door and comfortable seats are a great enticement after the cold hard bench. Not surprisingly, Saroo climbs aboard and once again falls off to sleep. He is jolted awake when the train begins moving and has no idea what is going on … but this is no ordinary train. It has just been decommissioned and is heading to its final resting place on the other side of the country.
With the doors and windows shut fast and no way of getting off, two days later he finds himself more than 1500 kms from home in Calcutta, one of the busiest cities in India. A place where a different language is spoken and its people are too busy and/or poor to care about a small lost child in a strange land. Days turn into weeks as he tries to find his way home in this bustling metropolis and a local temple offers the chance for the famished five-year-old to steal a few morsels of fresh fruit from that offered to the local gods to appease his growling stomach pains. An offer to share a home with all its comforts from a kindly young woman – including warm showers and proper food – soon turns into something that appears far more sinister than originally thought. Our poor little tyke soon high-tails it away and once again finds himself out on the streets, seeking food and shelter in nearby slums, garbage tips or under massive bridges in this scary city. My heart broke trying to imagine my little six-year-old grandson facing these same heartbreaking circumstances all alone, especially as dreams and visions of Saroo’s mother and brother out searching for him filled most of the lost little boy's sleeping and waking hours.
Sunny Pawar as Saroo with his cardboard bed tucked under his arm
Eventually he ends up in a government centre for abandoned children and, being so young, Saroo only knows his first name, has no idea of the name of his hometown and when asked, “What is your mother’s name?” his instant and only reply is, “Mummy.” The authorities have no idea where to look for help but print flyers with his name, photo and any bare details he can remember, albeit with no luck. A few weeks later, Saroo is moved to a place where adoptions take place – both these centres have been unwelcoming and austere places but far better than the cardboard bed and dangerous hovels he has been sheltering in for so many months. Eventually, a kindly husband and wife from Australia offer to raise him as their own. A year has passed since that first traumatic night when it comes time for him to board an international jet and fly to Hobart in Tasmania to live with his new mother and father in a land that resembles nothing like the one he knows.
My heart broke all over again and the tears flowed readily – as did many others in the theatre from the amount of sniffing and blowing of noses going on – when he was met at the airport by this caring couple. After enduring so much horror, now he would know the love of a mother again, as well as a full belly and an undisturbed sleep – finally, our little hero was safe and away from harm.
The story then takes us to his new and luxurious home – a place where he is shown love, compassion and patience and provided with an education far above anything he would ever have known in his own homeland. And yet, always at the back of his mind are memories of a beautiful woman whom he once called Mum and a loving brother he adored – two faces he can never forget. Over the space of many years, the young child now grown into a man secretly uses Google Maps as a tool to help him find landmarks and any form of recognisable topography which may lead him back to his first family. This need becomes an obsession and one he keeps from his new family with the fear it would hurt them deeply to know he was looking for his past life.
This is a rich tapestry of emotional happenstances in a place where the mere practice of normal living involves incredible hardships. The fact that an innocent child of the most tender years has to survive this nightmare on his own is both astounding and gut-wrenching for this Aussie grandmother.
Sunny Pawar does an inspirational job as the young Saroo – and much to my delight and amazement, apparently he was plucked from 2000 hopefuls to play the poignant role. Living in a Mumbai slum with his young family and with no experience or real knowledge of anything to do with the film-making world, not only is Sunny wonderfully talented, he has to be one of the cutest little boys you could ever imagine. All I wanted to do was pick him up and take him home with me – no, I’m not a kidnapper, simply a woman who adores little people and delights in seeing them happy.
* Sunny’s achievements has [sic] not only made his family proud, he has now become an inspiration in his slum community. Grandmother Shobha Beema Pawar, 45, said: "Kids around our area have always been very naughty but Sunny's achievement has given them their own dreams. They now have goals in life. It is good to see these children - and their parents - changing their view on life and career. These children now want to achieve something in life, and their parents have started supporting them. It is so beautiful that our Sunny has become an inspiration to so many others at such a tender age. This was written in his destiny and I thank the Almighty for that."
I couldn’t agree more!
Dev Pateel embodies the older Saroo with all of the gratitude expected towards his new family, while underpinned with the deep-seated loss of his first one. A tender love story is another facet that provides a caring glimpse into this true tale. Rooney Mara brings a gentle form of determination as his romantic interest, while Nicole Kidman and David Wenham, although in much smaller roles than normal, perfectly embody Saroo’s new parents with kindness, compassion and the normal expectations of any family in this day and age in a first world country.
** In the film, before Saroo sets off to find his birth mother, Sue [his adoptive mother] tells him: “I can’t wait for her to see how beautiful you are.”
“That, to me, is the most gorgeous line in the film,” says Kidman. “Because that’s the truth of it. For me. Because Saroo has two mothers. He has his adopted mother, and his biological mother. But there are two of them. One made him, one raised him.”
Nicole Kidman and Sue Brierley, Saroo's adoptive mother, share a friendly rapport
To me, that’s the true heart of one mother for another of the same child – wanting to share her beautiful boy so neither he nor the other one miss out on knowing love in all its fullness and goodness.
Abhishek Bharate and Priyanka Bose, although onscreen for only a short amount of time, provide a convincing job of displaying the love shared between mothers and children and siblings no matter how dire their circumstances.
The cinematography is just breathtaking and the opening sequence of several of India's glorious panoramas is a feast for the eyes. It provides a delightful atmospheric snapshot of this scenic sub-continent in all of its beauty intermingled with dire poverty.
The true video accounts of Saroo’s life rolling through the credits are the perfect conclusion and sure to make the tears fall – mine certainly did, especially with the paragraph revealing what became of Guddu – while one of the most heartbreaking additions to this story was a line right at the very end that stated there are over 80,000 children who go missing each year in India. Read that again … 80,000 little children who go missing EVERY YEAR … thankfully, the film's production company and American distributor have set up a charity to help these children – a wonderful legacy to an inspirational story. I can only hope many more of these little people find the love and support Saroo did.
An absorbing film of abounding love, tragic loss, utter destitution, an impossible dream and everlasting hope entwined inside a story that is both inspirational and tragic all at the same time. Would I see it again? You bet I would … and with another full packet of tissues in my bag.
* Excerpt from newspaper The Sun article written by Helen Roberts and Charnamrit Sachdeva, published on 29 Jan 2017.
** Excerpt from The Guardian article by Decca Aitkenhead, published on 13 Jan 2017.
