( POST THIRTY THREE )
FILM RESEARCH TASK
Lion was a huge success during 2016's award season, claiming nominations across the board from critics groups, the Golden Globes, BAFTA, PGA, DGA, SAG and the Oscars, where it received seven nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography. It has become the fifth highest grossing Australian film of all time at the local box office, with an accumulative worldwide gross of $123,723,779. As well as this, it has scored 8.1/10 on IMDb, rated by 146,129 users.
Production company - Screen Australia, See-Saw films, Aquarius Films
Distributor - The Weinstein Company
Director - Garth Davis
Cinematographer - Greig Fraser
Composer - Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O'Halloran
Editor - Alexandre de Franceschi
Stars - Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara
Other notable personnel - Sunny Pawar and David Wenham
The director, Garth Davis, also directed the TV series Top of the Lake
From reading the synopsis, and watching the trailer, we can see that the story is biographical as we join a five year old boy, Saroo, on a journey to find his brother after he gets lost around 1500 miles away from home.
The film is an adaptation of the non fiction book, 'A Long Way Home' written by Saroo Brierley. It isn't clear whether the film has any star vehicles, but Garth (the director) has worked with David Wenham before. From researching the film, I don't think that any of the actors were star vehicles, however in an interview with Saroo's mother, Sue Brierley, she mentioned that she had joked and hoped that Nicole Kidman would play her role in the adaption because she felt she had a connection with the actor, which may or may not have influenced the casting directors decision. The director isn't well known, with Lion being his First Feature film, but his other work including co-directing the first series of Top of the Lake, has quite a similar style.
The film is set in 1986, Calcutta, India. As it is non fiction, all of the events that we see are true and were not exaggerated for the benefit of the audience because the writers and directors felt it was unnecessary to change any of the story, because it was already incredibly raw and too extraordinary to be fiction. The film really depicted the unimaginable and depressing reality of the enormous amounts of children that go missing every day, at the end of the film, they state that over 80,000 children go missing in India each year. Also, India has more than 30 million orphans and I think the film has really shown how important the protection of children is and how much more needs to be done, because the situation has barely changed from when the film was set in 1986, and now.
Saroo, the protagonist, narrowly avoids enslavement as a child prostitute which I think, even on a small level, highlights the danger and severity of the situation surrounding child homelessness and everything that they face and are forced to endure. The film deals with the issues of western adoption of Indian children, as well was exposing the huge contrast between India's urban and rural poverty and Australia's wealth, as well as this it explores how cultural identities shape us in unforgettable ways.
Below are a few links of interesting reviews and articles about Lion regarding the social and political views displayed, as well as the true story itself :
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