Garth Davis had never directed a feature before Lion, and it shows in the way the film keeps reaching for the cleanest image in any room. That instinct serves the first half and betrays the second.
Trailer, via Disney UK.
A Five-Year-Old Asleep on a Bench in Khandwa
The film opens in 1986 in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh. Saroo, five years old, lives with his elder brother Guddu, his baby sister Shekila, and his mother. He tags along with Guddu to work, and the pair end up at a nearby train station. Saroo falls asleep on a bench.
When he wakes, Guddu is gone. Saroo climbs onto an empty train looking for him, falls asleep again in a compartment, and wakes to find the train moving and the doors locked.
Sunny Pawar plays young Saroo, and this stretch of Lion is the best thing in it. The train carries him across India for several days and dumps him in Calcutta, where he does not understand the local Bengali language. He tries to obtain a ticket home. The attendant does not recognize the name of his village, which Saroo gives as “Ganestalay.”
He sleeps in the station with street children and runs when a group of men tries to abduct them. He meets Noor, a woman who seems kind and takes him to her apartment, promising that a man named Rama will help him find his way home. Saroo senses what Noor and Rama intend and escapes, outrunning Noor when she chases him.
He lives near the Howrah Bridge for two months. Police take him in, and when they cannot find his family, he goes to an orphanage. An advertisement runs in local papers. Nobody answers.
Hobart, Tasmania, and the Brierley Family
An Australian couple has seen the ad. Saroo learns basic English and moves to Hobart, Tasmania, in 1987, to live with Sue and John Brierley — Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. A year later the Brierleys adopt a second Indian boy, Mantosh, played as a child by Keshav Jadhav and as an adult by Divian Ladwa. Mantosh struggles at home, and the film shows his rage and his self-harm.
Twenty years on, Saroo moves to Melbourne to study hotel management. Dev Patel takes over the role. He starts a relationship with Lucy, an American student played by Rooney Mara, and the question of where he is from starts to press on him.
The two halves of Lion are built from different materials. Here is how they compare:
| Element | India, 1986 | Australia, 1987 onward |
|---|---|---|
| Lead actor | Sunny Pawar | Dev Patel |
| Language Saroo meets | Bengali he cannot understand | English |
| Family in the film | Guddu, Shekila, mother | Sue, John, Mantosh, Lucy |
| What drives the scenes | Survival | The search for his first family |
That table is also the film’s structural problem. The first half runs on pure jeopardy. The second runs on a man at a laptop.
Dev Patel and the Long Search
Patel’s Saroo pieces his childhood together from fragments. He has the name “Ganestalay” and not much else. The film shows him hunting for the place he remembers, and the tagline — “The search begins” — is what the back half is: a search conducted largely indoors, over years.
Patel is the reason it holds. He plays the adult Saroo as a man quietly coming apart while everyone around him sees a well-adjusted immigrant success story. Kidman plays Sue Brierley as a woman who chose her sons deliberately, and she plays the choice as a fact rather than a virtue.
Luke Davies adapted the screenplay from Saroo Brierley’s 2013 nonfiction book, A Long Way Home. Davis directs from that script.
The supporting cast around the edges is deep. Abhishek Bharate plays Guddu. Priyanka Bose plays Kamla Munshi. Deepti Naval plays Saroj Sood. Tannishtha Chatterjee plays Noor, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Rama. Pallavi Sharda joined the cast in August 2015.
Casting came together over a year. Patel and Kidman were set in October 2014. Siddiqui, Bose, Chatterjee, and Naval joined in January 2015. Mara, Wenham, and Ladwa came aboard in April.
What the Awards and the Box Office Actually Say
Lion premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2016. The Weinstein Company gave it a limited North American release on 25 November 2016, then went wide on 6 January 2017. Australia got it on 19 January 2017, the United Kingdom on 20 January 2017.
It was a joint production between Australia and the United Kingdom, and it made $140 million worldwide.
The hardware followed:
- Six Oscar nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Patel, Best Supporting Actress for Kidman, and Best Adapted Screenplay
- Best Supporting Actor for Patel at the 70th British Academy Film Awards
- Best Adapted Screenplay at the same ceremony
Two BAFTAs and six Oscar nominations for a film whose second act is a man staring at maps is a real achievement, and it is worth being precise about what the awards rewarded. The nominations name Patel, Kidman, the screenplay, and the film itself. Davis is not among them, and that absence reads as an accurate verdict on the film rather than a snub.
Where Lion Goes Soft
The first hour of Lion is close to faultless. A child who cannot name his own village, in a city whose language he does not know, is a premise that needs no help. Davis shoots Calcutta as a place of constant motion and no exit, and Pawar carries it without ever seeming to perform.
The second hour is where the film loses its nerve. Saroo’s search is genuinely strange, and Lion keeps cutting away from it to reassure the audience. The emotional weight the film is praised for is real, but it is applied rather than earned, and it arrives on schedule.
The visuals are the most overrated element here. The film finds beautiful frames in both countries, and the beauty starts working against the story. Calcutta should not look this composed. Hobart should not look this golden.
The screenplay has the opposite problem from the direction. Davies has a genuinely difficult adaptation on his hands: a memoir built on an internal, years-long hunt has no natural scenes. He solves it by giving Saroo a brother who cannot adjust and a girlfriend who asks the right questions, which is competent and a little convenient.
Mantosh is the film’s most interesting loose thread. A second adopted child who suffers from rage and self-harm is a story Lion raises and then sets aside, because the film has already decided whose pain matters.
Lion is a good film with a great first act, and the gap between those two things is the whole review. It drew six Oscar nominations and $140 million worldwide. The directing nomination did not come, and the reason is visible on screen: Davis can build an image, but he cannot yet decide which one to trust.
Metacritic puts the film at 69 out of 100, or 6.9 of 10.
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