How the hell is “Lion” so damn good?
It’s one of the big questions hovering over the holiday movie season, right up there with urgent queries like “How many times have you seen ‘Moonlight?’” And it’s a question worth asking because — at least on paper — “Lion” should have been a kitschy melodrama or an exploitative disaster. Possibly both.
For one thing, it’s based on the kind of dangerously incredible true story that seems too astounding to go untold, but also — in a strange way — too banal to be dramatized. Saroo Brierley was born with a name he couldn’t remember, and in a place he couldn’t name. Raised in a squalid pocket of rural India with his single mother and older brothers, Saroo was accidentally separated from his family at age five, transported 930 miles across the country in the empty carriage of a random train, and...
It’s one of the big questions hovering over the holiday movie season, right up there with urgent queries like “How many times have you seen ‘Moonlight?’” And it’s a question worth asking because — at least on paper — “Lion” should have been a kitschy melodrama or an exploitative disaster. Possibly both.
For one thing, it’s based on the kind of dangerously incredible true story that seems too astounding to go untold, but also — in a strange way — too banal to be dramatized. Saroo Brierley was born with a name he couldn’t remember, and in a place he couldn’t name. Raised in a squalid pocket of rural India with his single mother and older brothers, Saroo was accidentally separated from his family at age five, transported 930 miles across the country in the empty carriage of a random train, and...
- 11/30/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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