Lion Movie Belonging

In the 2016 drama, Lion, directed by Garth Davis, the themes of belonging, identity and cultural heritage are depicted through various film elements. Lion is a true story based on a young Indian boy named Saroo, who, one evening wandered off on a empty train and ends up more than 1500 miles away from home, separated from his family for more than 25 years. He eventually attempts to find his way back home to his birth mother.

First of all, a biographical film, or biopic is a dramatized version of a specific event that has happened in someone’s life (“Biopics films” 1). These are a sub-genre of a larger category, in this case, drama. One of the first biographical film documented was a 1900 film named, Joan of Arc, directed by Georges Méliès,

a author from France (“Film genre” 2). Biographies stared because, people did not only want to see written proof of a historical figure existing, they wanted to be able to see the person and what they had accomplished or what they were remembered for (“Film genre” 2). In the beginning, the main reason they were made was to document war and monarchs in a serious and realistic matter (“Biopics films” 3). Comparatively, the movie Lion is a modern biographical that not only shows Saroo’s life, a poor Indian boy, but depicts it in a dramatic way, to make the viewers feel emotions throughout the film. The historical context behind the film, was that Saroo used Google Earth to find his mother and later wrote a book, A Long Way Home, about his extraordinary life and the experiences he encounters. Following the book, he was approached to use his story as a biographical film (Hughes 4).

Second of all, the film demonstrates very well certain emotional aspects, which reaches and touches the viewer directly, as if he was living it as well.

At the beginning of the movie, when the little boy is at the train terminal, the cinematographer chose to show the scene, through the eyes of the young character: “All he could see are people’s belts and knees, Fraser says. “If you’ve ever experienced being in an Indian train station as the train pulls in, even as a six-foot adult, it’s incredibly scary. You just have people storming at you, bumping around you, without any regard to your safety” (Lang 3). The fear and worry in his eyes, the loud noises and the constant movements around him, portray well the emotion, through the camera, to the viewers. In addition, the cinematographer panned out from the location Saroo was in, to show exactly how many people were there. This resulted in, the spectator realizing that it would be impossible for Saroo to find his way home. It is an emotional turning point in the story, because you loose hope for the character and it makes you reflect on the emotions that Saroo is feeling. The elements of drama incorporated it this film would be, the main idea. He is separated from his family at a very young age. The background noise and the music from the soundtrack makes you pin your gaze to the screen, to image the world that he is in. When we see an emotional scene, the music is calm and soothing and when, it is a dramatic part of the film,

the music is loud, there are screams. From the cinematic point of view, the camera is often the eyes of character, in other words, we see it through his perspective, which builds drama and tension, while the landscapes let us understand were he is, in the story (Lang 1). The film was shot in Australia and India and the juxtaposition of these two places created amazing establishing shots (“Colmbia University” 12). As well as, the editing of the flashbacks lets the audience see the two worlds simultaneously (Valentini 2).

Third of all, this real-life story lets everyone find something to relate too.

The main message of not loosing hope touches each person that watches the film. Not to mention that, the parallel narrative, lets us understand his search for his cultural identity, by going back and forth from Australia to India (Valentini 1). When Saroo finally finds his mother, there is no dialogue between these two but it is still a very sentimental and relatable scene. The audience can understand the feeling of finally seeing someone you love and miss, which makes it is easy to imagine ourselves at his place and feeling the joy and the sadness, all at once. The lack of dialogue in this scene does not stop it from being very emotional, as a result of the physical contact between the two. Seeing them touching, looking at each other, embracing, crying showed us the sense of belonging that he was searching for throughout the film. He was raised as an Austrian and could no longer communicate with his mother, but the connection was still present and felt through the

screen.

In conclusion, the film Lion is a biographical film of the main character Saroo, who ends up finding his mother, after 25 years of being apart. The film is very powerful in depicting every emotion felt by the character, of Saroo ,as a child and even him as an adult, with a chilling message of hope but also a ending that states a statistic, that 80 000 children go missing every year in India, which makes you realize how real the matter of kidnapping is, in that country.