Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 20 May

Lion (Davis, 2016)

I’ve been look­ing for free stuff (at least free for loc­al view­ers) and I’m delighted to see that Garth Davis’ based-on-a-true-story Lion is now on TVNZ+.

I reviewed it for RNZ Widescreen when it was released to cinemas back in January 2017 (when At the Movies was on sum­mer hiatus):

Don’t trust review­ers who pre­tend to be per­fectly object­ive. It’s not pos­sible. We come to the role with pre-existing con­di­tions and if our edit­ors had any sense they would have used those con­di­tions to keep us out like an American health insurer but here we are.

My Achilles’ heel has always been the sweet spot where redemp­tion stor­ies meet dis­place­ment or dia­spora. Preferably involving chil­dren. These are the stor­ies that nev­er fail to engage and move me. I can’t recuse myself and I won’t apologise.

So, I’m here to report that Lion kicked my ass big time to the extent that I was the last to leave the cinema at the end of the cred­its. It’s the con­fid­ent debut fea­ture from Australian Garth Davis (Top of the Lake) and I knew what to expect going in. I’d read a Vanity Fair art­icle about Tasmanian-Indian Saroo Brierley and his long quest to find his ori­gin­al fam­ily a few years ago and thought at the time that it might make a good film.

Brierley arrived in Australia as a five-year-old lost boy, relo­cated after Indian author­it­ies were unable to find his fam­ily. How he became lost is only the first heart­break in the film. Dirt poor in the province of Khandwa in cent­ral India, Saroo was devoted to his older broth­er and insisted on going with him when Guddu went to the rail­way sta­tion to scrounge for work or beg for money.

…

The oth­er reas­on to see Lion is the per­form­ance of Dev Patel as the adult Saroo, sport­ing the best Australian accent I’ve heard in years (and that includes most Australian act­ors if I’m hon­est). Patel was the star of anoth­er film about a grown man look­ing back on a per­il­ous but col­our­ful child­hood, Slumdog Millionaire; that was my per­son­al favour­ite of 2009 so I’m obvi­ously a suck­er for this sort of thing.

Incidentally, news for Aotearoa sub­scribers – last Tuesday’s recom­mend­a­tion, Frances Ha, has now dropped on TVNZ+ so you can watch it for free (with ads).

Where to watch Lion

Aotearoa: Streaming on TVNZ+ (free with ads) or Beamafilm (free from par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lic libraries)

Australia: Streaming on FoxtelNow, Binge or Beamafilm

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Starz

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Streaming on Netflix

UK: Digital rental