(Note: in the interest of doing as many Oscar-related write-ups as I can between now and the end of February, I'm putting Buster Mondays on hold for the time being. Depending on how many movies I get to, I may have to shave off a couple Marvelous Wednesdays, too.)
This is
just a beautiful film, really well-done around and gripping with emotion. It definitely falls into the category of
“truth is stranger (and, at times, more wonderful) than fiction,” which makes
it all the more stunning. Some spoilers
by necessity.
One
night, 5-year-old Saroo boards a train a few stations away from his small
village in rural India. He is
alone. Having fallen asleep, he wakes to
realize he is far from home with no idea where he is and no sense of when he’ll
even be able to get off the train. It
finally deposits him in Calcutta, over 1,000 miles away from his home and his
family, even his language – as he frantically asks for help in Hindi, he’s only
met with gruff responses in Bengali.
Saroo scrapes for survival, all the while dreaming to get back to his
mother and siblings, but it seems an impossibility. He winds up in an orphanage, where he’s
adopted by an Australian couple and lovingly raised in their home. The early chapter of his life gets buried
under new memories, but none too deep.
When his remembrances are disturbed, he shares the truth about what
happened to him with friends, who encourage him to resume his quest to find
home some 25 years later. Armed with
Google Earth images of India, a search radius, and line after blurry line of
endless miles of railroad tracks, Saroo searches for the impossible.
A truly
incredible story, the sort that people would dismiss as implausible if it were
fiction. But it’s not; it really
happened, and the film takes great care and respect in bringing Saroo’s story
to life onscreen. It’s a deeply
emotional movie that I think exquisitely conveys the depth of Saroo’s anguish
as he gives himself over more fully to his journey, digging in deeper and
letting it consume both his waking and sleeping hours, needing there to be a
light at the end of the tunnel because he can’t bear the thought of searching
and finding only darkness. Thoughtful camera
work juxtaposes past and present as the two swirl confusedly in Saroo’s heart,
and Dev Patel captures this tug between hope and despair wonderfully (watching
this film, it’s crazy to think he used to be on Skins – Anwar’s all grown up!)
I’m going
backwards a little here, but the young Saroo sequence in India is also
remarkably well-done. Sunny Pawar does a
great job in his first onscreen role, and light, noise, and frenetic blocking
all work together to pull you into the chaos and confusion of his young life
when he gets lost in Calcutta. I
especially love the scene where he finally gets off the train, how the camera
follows him at his height with a crush of extras pressing in on all sides. You get such a powerful feel of his
claustrophobia.
It’s a
complicated story with big emotions and few easy answers (Nicole Kidman is also
wonderful as Saroo’s adopted mother,) and generally speaking, the film hits the
right note every time. It allows things
to get really messy, to get lost physically as well as emotionally, to feel
untethered even on one’s own doorstep. I
was really impressed, and it’s a film that will stick with me for some time to
come.
Warnings
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