A long way home by saroo brierley11/22/2023 Saroo can vividly recall his early childhood – the hunger and scavenging, the bond with his mother and siblings – but can also “disassociate” himself from the experience, he says. Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley and Sunny Pawar as the young Saroo in Lion. Because they’re all going flash-flash-flash, and people are saying: ‘Over here, over here, this way, this way.’” The only nerve-racking thing is these cameras. “No! It definitely won’t be nerve-racking. Will it be nerve-racking to sit in the Dolby Theatre? Brierley, affable and easygoing, bursts out laughing. It has been largely well reviewed, and has earned cast and crew multiple nominations and awards, but it chugs into the Oscars as a longshot contender. Directed by Garth Davis, it stars Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel as young and older Saroo respectively, and Nicole Kidman and David Wenham as his adoptive parents. Lion’s box office numbers speak, too: it is now roaring past a $100m take. “We were tactile, using our hands and faces to express what we felt. The memory of her face had been embedded in my mind for such a long time.”įatima did not speak English and he had forgotten his Hindi. She knew who I was, and I knew who she was. A mother like her would not have forgotten one of her children’s looks. I still have that sort of babyface within me. “She saw my face, after 25 years of separation. “It was such a pivotal moment,” he recalls, seated in a low chair high above the LA traffic. In February 2012 he travelled there and – spoiler alert – found his biological mother, Fatima. Saroo – by now a robust, happy, windsurfing, fully fledged Aussie – used Google Earth, a handful of visual memories and immense dedication to identify his home town: Khandwa, in central India. Photograph: Allstar/Screen AustraliaĪ quarter-century later came the implausible twist. He was later taken in by an orphanage, and was eventually adopted by an Australian couple, Sue and John Brierley, who took him to start a new life in Tasmania. He lived as a street urchin and survived on his wits and scraps of food. Unable to speak Bengali, and unaware of the name of his home town, he had no way to return. It tells the story of how, in 1986, Saroo, an illiterate, impoverished five-year-old in rural central India, got separated from his brother at a railway station in Burhanpur, and accidentally ended up alone on a train that took him almost a thousand miles to Kolkata (then called Calcutta). “The feelgood movie we all need,” blares the promotional blurb, and for once the hype may be justified. The story of his life, Lion, is up for six Oscars, including best picture. That is quite a feat, given his stake in this year’s awards. I’m sitting back, listening, you know, taking it in day by day.” But I just don’t really want to get into it. “You can really submerge yourself in it and get lost – let it cloud you. Tragically, a child alone at the Calcutta train station was all too common and didn’t warrant anyone’s attention or need for concern.Brierley, casual in a white T-shirt and black jeans, shrugs off the frenzy. Saroo ended up disembarking at Calcutta station where despite his pleas for help he was ignored. When he woke up he quickly realised the landscape he could see out of the windows was different and the train was moving through more heavily populated towns. Saroo boarded the train which soon left the station while Saroo was sleeping. He spotted a train with a carriage door open. As the night grew later, Saroo felt more and more alone. That night was exhausting for Saroo, Guduu instructed him to stay on the platform while he did a few things, promising to return when he had finished his work. Guduu expressed his concern that this was not a good idea as he felt Saroo was too small (he was only five years old), but Guduu soon relented. One evening Saroo convinced his older brother Guduu to allow him to join him while he tried to earn some money or food working at the railway station.
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