Lion, a film about a boy from India who gets lost, lives the life of a slumdog and is finally adopted by an Australian family has got film critics here ecstatic.
What has won the heart of the critics, however, is Sunny Pawar’s performance. Sunny, who plays the younger version of Dev Patel’s character in the film, by the time he arrives in Hobart, “has lived through enough trauma for three lives”.
The film is based on the real life story of Saroo Brierley, who wrote book about his life in India and his ‘resurrection’ in Australia.
“Sunny Pawar, playing young (Saroo), is exceptional. Director Garth Davis tells this part of the story with delicacy and classic technique, surrounding the child with huge spaces and people who might be angels or devils. Our identification with his plight becomes complete,” says the Sydney Morning Herald.
In a review titled “Lost boy tale hits emotional payload”, the Age critic writes: “Truly, Charles Dickens could not have written a more perfectly strange story than that of Saroo Brierley, the Indian boy lost on a train who has to find his way home again 25 years later... The first story has such simple beauty that you don’t want it to end. The second has so much pain that less might have been more. The pain is also Dickensian, but the picture tends to dwell when it needs to rocket.”
Lion is scheduled for a February release in India.
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