Lion

You'd need to have a heart of stone to not be moved to tears — and, more specifically, the kind of tears that are simultaneously sad and joyful — by the conclusion of Lion, the new Australian film based on A Long Way Home, the memoir by Saroo Brierley.

Pleasingly, however, the film does earn its touching ending, having taken the audience through a stranger-than-fiction true story that encompasses the best, worst, bravest and strongest of human behaviour.

It's true, Lion is a little uneven as a film — particularly in its second half. But mostly it's crafted with care and grace by director Garth Davis and screenwriter Luke Davies, who recognise the inherent dramatic possibilities of Saroo's story while respecting their foundation in fact.

The story begins in rural India in the mid-1980s, with a very young Saroo (newcomer Sunny Pawar) a happy child despite the impoverished conditions in which he lives with his mother, older brother and baby sister. But when Saroo badgers his brother into going out one night to look for loose change and left-behind items on trains, he unexpectedly finds himself alone on an empty train bound for the city of Kolkata, nearly 2,000 kilometres away. When he arrives in Kolkata, Saroo doesn't know a soul and doesn't know the local dialect. He mispronounces the name of his village and only knows his mother's name as 'Mum'. Poverty is rife. Even worse, there are many predators with an eye out for children on their own, of which there are many.

After months surviving on the street, he ends up in an orphanage, which is only a slight improvement ("This is a bad place," one of his fellow orphans warns him). But it's here that Saroo's luck takes a turn for the better when he is adopted by an Australian couple — Sue and John Brierley, played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. 

Two decades pass by and Saroo — now played by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel — is a true-blue Aussie. But when memories of his childhood ordeal begin to surface, he uses a new computer program called Google Earth to retrace his steps the fateful night he was lost, search for familiar landmarks in India and find his hometown. Saroo is driven but at the same time torn — while his search for his roots consumes him, he doesn't want to offend the parents who raised him by looking for his birth family.

The first half of Lion is more gripping and involving than the second, mainly because young Saroo's story has the feel of modern-day Charles Dickens or an urban Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Davis' direction depicts Saroo's plight with just the right amount of seriousness and grimness (too much would make Lion too upsetting to bear), but also infuses it with a child's sense of wonder and discovery. And little Pawar is charming, expressive and eminently adorable.

Once the story switches to Saroo's new life in Australia, the film becomes a little disjointed. But it benefits greatly from the conviction and charisma of Patel, who's matured into a strong, handsome leading man (and who completely nails the Australian accent and mannerisms).

And one cannot overlook the superb work of Kidman, who vividly conveys Sue's seemingly boundless love and pride.