kandycane420 – Google

Lion is a film I watched many years ago and thought was pretty good but rewatching it now gave me a different impression. I don't like films that are very emotionally manipulative and melodramatic. The main goal of the film is to make you cry. The score of Lion is about the most cliche a film like this could get— emotional piano playing. It seems like it's used every 5 minutes to squeeze a tear out of you but it never came for me even at the end. The film has very little nuance but does explore many themes, some well and some not so well. We never really get to know any of the characters like who they are as people because the film rushes to make its sappy ending that it completely forgets about the character work. I left this film knowing very little about Saroo, in fact, I could probably only count those things on my two hands. His relationships with his girlfriend and brother are left incomplete because the film gets carried away with trying to set up the emotional final scenes. This film will please the majority of people and The Academy because it's made that way, but it didn't resonate with me. Still, there are definitely positives in this film especially the first half of the film which I thought was brilliant because it didn't rely on specific techniques to make you empathetic or emotional but just presented the issues that real people have gone through. The visuals in the film are stunning and the acting, although can be over-the-top sometimes, is great. The portrayal of adoption and what comes with it is explored well and so is the relationship between Saroo and Sue. The second half seems half-baked and has few redeeming qualities. Why was this film made? To share Saroo Brierley's story, sure, but to share who he was as a person or anyone else around him for that matter, no. By watching Lion, I learned that Saroo is selfish, ignorant, and the perfect child. Whether that's a flaw in the character or the writing is completely up to you. Saroo is very poorly written as we know virtually nothing about him other than the fact he loves his mother/s and brothers and that he wants to manage hotels, but when the film could've expanded on his character through the hotel bit, the creators of the film decided to make it into a gag and when he's asked the question as to why else he's involved in hotels the scene cuts off. Important figures in Saroo's life are written poorly except for Guddu. His father does one maybe two important things in the film but he might as well not be there half the time; Lucy is extremely shallow, has zero interests, other than Saroo, and is completely defined by him and him alone; Mantosh isn't portrayed sympathetic enough and again, shallow; Sue is the one out of these four that is given any depth at all and it's very much rudimentary or at least a rudimentary exploration of it. This should've been a whole lot longer or made into a mini/limited series because the entire second half is way too rushed because the writers were so hyper-fixated on the plot and conclusion that they almost completely forgot everything that's needed in between. The first half of this is undeniably great but it goes downhill subsequently. Lion is a largely inadequate biopic.

Lion

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