Lion * * *

    Some films I just avoid.  There’s just something about them I find unappealing. I’m afraid Lion fell into that category. It just looked like such a “Tryhard”.   

Calcutta one day, Hobart the next.

     Because I wasn’t keen to see it I am late in reviewing it (it’s been out for a few weeks now).

     Also I was away when it was released.  But I had some time last night and went off to check it out.

    A lost little Indian boy is classified an orphan and then given out to a couple in Tasmania who like to adopt Indian orphans.

     After twenty five years he decides he feels an urgent need to find out where he came from and feels he can’t move forward in life until he does so.  So he commences a search using Google Earth and his memory of landmarks, which might sound rather dull, but it’s actually well played as he puts the pieces together.

     The first half of the film shows how he became lost by being on a decommissioned train that travelled 1600 kilometres from his home before he could get off.  When he arrived in Calcutta no one could understand him as the dialect is different.  As an orphan he was adopted by an Australian couple.  His life was happy and he was loved and cared for.  Indeed, his adoptive parents fully understood his need to find his biological family.

     A lost and vulnerable child is always moving to watch and this film pulls no punches in the first half as the poor little boy wanders around the streets of Calcutta.

     As an adult his reunion with his family is played to squeeze every last drop of emotion from it.

    So I was right.  It is a film designed primarily to pull at your heartstrings - but if that’s what it wants to do, it does it well. You’ll probably squirt a few.

    Lion is a competent, well acted, beautifully photographed film.  It is very moving and worthy of it’s praise  . I’ll try not to be so presumptuous next time.