Lion Movie Belonging

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In the 2016 drama, Lion, directed by Garth Davis, the themes of belonging, identity and cultural heritage are depicted through various film elements. Lion is a true story based on a young Indian boy named Saroo, who, one evening wandered off on a empty train and ends up more than 1500 miles away from home, separated from his family for more than 25 years. He eventually attempts to find his way back home to his birth mother. First of all, a biographical film, or biopic is a dramatized version of a specific event that has happened in someone’s life (“Biopics films” 1). These are a sub-genre of a larger category, in this case, drama. One of the first biographical film documented was a 1900 film named, Joan of Arc, directed by Georges Méliès, …show more content…

At the beginning of the movie, when the little boy is at the train terminal, the cinematographer chose to show the scene, through the eyes of the young character: “All he could see are people’s belts and knees, Fraser says. “If you’ve ever experienced being in an Indian train station as the train pulls in, even as a six-foot adult, it’s incredibly scary. You just have people storming at you, bumping around you, without any regard to your safety” (Lang 3). The fear and worry in his eyes, the loud noises and the constant movements around him, portray well the emotion, through the camera, to the viewers. In addition, the cinematographer panned out from the location Saroo was in, to show exactly how many people were there. This resulted in, the spectator realizing that it would be impossible for Saroo to find his way home. It is an emotional turning point in the story, because you loose hope for the character and it makes you reflect on the emotions that Saroo is feeling. The elements of drama incorporated it this film would be, the main idea. He is separated from his family at a very young age. The background noise and the music from the soundtrack makes you pin your gaze to the screen, to image the world that he is in. When we see an emotional scene, the music is calm and soothing and when, it is a dramatic part of the film, …show more content…

The main message of not loosing hope touches each person that watches the film. Not to mention that, the parallel narrative, lets us understand his search for his cultural identity, by going back and forth from Australia to India (Valentini 1). When Saroo finally finds his mother, there is no dialogue between these two but it is still a very sentimental and relatable scene. The audience can understand the feeling of finally seeing someone you love and miss, which makes it is easy to imagine ourselves at his place and feeling the joy and the sadness, all at once. The lack of dialogue in this scene does not stop it from being very emotional, as a result of the physical contact between the two. Seeing them touching, looking at each other, embracing, crying showed us the sense of belonging that he was searching for throughout the film. He was raised as an Austrian and could no longer communicate with his mother, but the connection was still present and felt through the

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