Lion - The Charming Champ

You meet a soul in the first 30 minutes of movie and he takes you through the entire film. It's a real life story of a lost boy from India who grew up with his adopted parents in Tasmania, Australia. Movies are all about story telling. They come with various flavours - fiction, real life, sc-fi and so on.. Lion is the story from a man's life chapter who spent his initial five years in India under the tough, indigence life. Later he grew up in Australia, with memories of his lost mother, brother & sister. Years later, he decides to go find his lost mother and siblings and you become a part of his journey both emotional & heart-rending. On paper this is a simple story, but when you travel with this soul throughout his journey, it's intense and very much grounded. This is a true emotion that everyone could relate to.
Based on real Saroo Brierley's memoir "A Long Way Home", the true story of his own where he imagines the agony & pain of his mom and brother they went through in search of missing boy, the script (Luke Davies) itself stood as a backbone of this movie. With no background of directing a full length feature film, Garth Davis ensured the compassion and concerns of Saroo portrayed in best possible narrative style. The good part is is that as I mentioned at the beginning, you feel like being a part of Saroo's journey. To add on to the script and narration, cinematography & background score were above the par.
There was a shot in the movie where young Saroo was standing alone on the Howrah Bridge in the tungsten background which was incredible. The heavy traffic bridge was shut down by the crew in order to film a single scene and this was the first time the bridge had ever been closed to public. There was another scene from the movie where A.R. Rahman song "Urvasi" is featured and I'm sure that's the goosebumps moment for every Indian !.
Young Sunny Pawar is the show stealer of the movie and deserves ton of recognition for handling emotional ride for almost first half of the movie. Dev Patel became obsessed with withdrawn & memory haunted Saroo and definitely will be the conversation among award circles (after slumdog millionaire). Nichole Kidman as an adopted mother (as in her real life) showcased incredible performance especially in the scene when she explains why she adopted him when she could have had her own child.
Truely, Lion is one of the best movies I watched recently and personally it woke me up from the hibernation mode of not watching many movies due to x,y,z reasons. A must watch for all :)