Kidman, herself an adoptive mother of two, delivers her words with such nakedly honest emotion, all the Kleenex in the world won’t stop the ensuing flood. She uses the occasion to finally explain to Saroo exactly why she and his father, John ( David Wenham, best known as Faramir in “The Lord of Rings”), decided to adopt him. Being adopted as an infant myself, I know that feeling all too well, which is why I still refer to my mother and father who raised me simply as “my parents,” with no qualifier.īut that is topped soon after by a revelation shared by Sue, a tower of maternal tenderness and immense devotion embodied by Nicole Kidman, who is excellent despite a distractingly awful curly red wig. The reason for his secrecy? He did not want to hurt the two incredibly generous and supportive people who rescued him from a Dickensian existence filled with poverty, hunger and potential abuse after being taken to a big-city facility for homeless street children. For me, the killer moment was when the adult Saroo-in the form of a beefed-up Dev Patel, whose 2008 breakout film “ Slumdog Millionaire” serves as a sort of companion piece to “Lion”-finally and somewhat guiltily confesses to his Australian adoptive mother, Sue, that he has been spending countless days doing research while seeking out his birth family via Google Earth. Truly intelligent crowd-pleasers that avoid blatant manipulation are a rarity, but director Garth Davis (TV’s “Top of the Lake”) and screenwriter Luke Davies mostly keep any sentimental overload at bay until the very end-and, by that time, it is exactly what the audience needs and the film deserves.Įmotional triggers might arrive at several points during this decades-spanning tale of longing and loss that is also a mystery about an unknown past. It's little wonder that “Lion” has collected quite a few audience awards at festivals since premiering in Toronto in September.

Lion in hindi is called saroo