I just saw this and it is the only movie I have ever seen that left me wanting to read the book. I loved it!! Has anyone else seen it and if so, how’d you like it?
I loved it too. I have seen all the 2016 Best Picture Oscar nominees, and this was my favorite (well, I keep waffling between ‘Lion’ and ‘Fences’).
Highly recommended.
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I saw it. The child’s story was compelling. The screen time of him as an adult dragged and felt padded with melodrama. The child actor was so winning that Dev Patel seemed morose by comparison, and starting the adult story right before he becomes obsessed with finding his birth family left his character constrained. He’s less a whole person and more just a vehicle for getting the plot to where it needed to be.
It might have been more effective to show some of his childhood assimilation, to explain how he put memories of India aside so thoroughly. If nothing else, it would seem like Mantosh’s unhappiness would be a constant reminder that they came over from elsewhere. Perhaps Saroo was shutting off old memories as part of an unconscious effort to be the good child for his adoptive parents: I don’t know, but the movie might have benefited from showing some of that dynamic that led up to adulthood.
I hadn’t seen every best picture nominee, but of the ones I did see (including La La Land and Moonlighting) it was definitely my favorite. One thing I did that you might enjoy doing is to search for Saroo on Youtube. There are many interviews with him, and news pieces about the real story that add to your understanding of what happened. it is definitely one of the most amazing and unusual stories I’ve seen on film, and the fact that it’s true and there are real people behind it makes it that much more fascinating.
Lion wasn’t the best movie I saw last year, but it was the best of the Best Picture nominations that I saw.
I think the moment at the end where we see his Australian mother meet his Indian mother in real life might have been the most powerful moment of the year.
I’ve adopted two children, both from Korea. We also can have kids and chose to adopt as a first option. We liked seeing this represented on screen.
It was my second favorite of the Best Picture nominations (behind Arrival, and slightly ahead of Moonlight).
I’ve been googling his interviews-video & written obsessively. And reading his facebook page. This story fascinates me on so many levels & the picture of that little boy in his white shorts, knee socks, & Tasmania shirt with that indescribable look on his face is incredible. What was going through his little mind arriving in this strange land where everything was so different? What’s going to happen to me???
I agree with a lot of what you wrote…and based on a lot of the interviews I’ve heard and read, I think a lot of artistic license was taken. I’ll obviously know more after I read the book. For one thing, I learned he had two brothers and for some reason one of them was left out of the movie-he was there when Saroo returned. Also the movie made it seem like he was psychologically decompensating, dropping out of school etc, but in one interview, he mentioned that he did this in his spare time while going to university and working, so I think that may have been added in for dramatic effect. Also his gf in real life was Australian, not American & I didn’t get the impression his adopted brother had all those problems. I have no clue why they made those changes, but I would have preferred if they stayed truer to the real story.
I saw all 9 BP nominees and this was among my least favorite…relentlessly melodramatic. The kid playing him as a kid was terrific, though, as was Nicole Kidman.
Go read the book!
It’s about 10x better than the movie; which is not bad! I’m not saying that I didn’t like it. I actually really did.
I kinda felt like they added two unnecessary aspects to the story, just by virtue of casting, though.
The “Dev Patel is Very Handsome!” plot, which involved him needing to be sexy and/or shirtless at many points during the movie’s second act. None of that was in the book. But oh my, what a looker! (swoon)
And then, the “Nicole Kidman Wants an Oscar!” plot, which gave Saroo’s mom about 1000% more lines than she ever got in the book. I had a hard time forgetting that Nicole Kidman is, herself, a mother of adopted children where the relationship has fractured, and I really felt her pain when she was dealing with the Mantosh situation. Always nice to see her using her normal Australian accent, also. But it was (a little) distracting.
It’s such an amazing story that it’s hard to believe that it all really happened. I thought they did an excellent job overall with the material.
I know this was based on a true story, but all through the “Dev Patel uses Google Earth” section, I kept thinking that it couldn’t possibly be taking him this long to conduct his search, unless he was doing it really, really stupidly. There are probably nuances behind what he did that are hard to capture on screen (maybe I should read the book) but two stood out as particularly egregious.
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He finally finds his village after all but giving up and accidentally scrolling the mouse too far – that just felt like lazy screenwriting.
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At the same moment, he finds out that the village he remembered as being named “Ganastaly” (or something) was actually named “Ganesh Talai.” That felt awful close to me, and it seems like if this was based on reality, it should have been much easier to find.
So, yeah, I disliked the whole middle section, but I agree that the kid at the beginning was great.