Lion, directed by Garth Davis is the story of a young mans struggle to find his way home after being lost for 25 years. This incredible film follows the journey of a young Indian boy who gets lost in a train station and soon finds himself thousands of miles away from home with no way of getting back. As he wonders the streets of this new and strange city he soon finds himself adopted by an Australian family, and brought back to there home in Melbourne. Saroo, grows up and comes to love his new family but soon realizes his obvious differences and longs to travel back to his origins from which he was separated from. Close to 25 years later he makes the decision to retrace his steps through his past to his homeland.
The film takes young Saroo's point of view as a young Indian child, caught up in a huge world full of strange people and places. In my opinion it does an incredible job of breaking away from the Orientalism that plagues our cultural views of the East. It has a unique and engaging story line told from a new point of view. It gives the audience an inside looking out lenses, from a young boys eyes who has no understanding of the world that surrounds him, both East and West. The film unlike past films like Slumdog Millionaire, has no extreme and bizarre cultural bias, of "forginism". It does show the polar change between East and West but does in a realistic and powerful way. Giving a human feel that focuses on the bonds between people and sense the main character doesn't fully fit into either world that surrounds him he gives a unique and unbiased view of the two worlds that surround him.
It is a very cool perspective when we, the audience, gets a point of view from a person who is neither fully Indian nor fully American. It gives us an idea of what american society is like from the Indian point of view and what society in India is like from the American point of view.
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