Lion

An approach noticed in the film Lion is the Corrigan approach genre because you can see this film as a drama. Most of it at the beginning, it is a story of childhood displacement where Saroo is separated from his birth mother and tries to reconnect with her (Judah 6). This is a good example of drama because it all is based on a true story and is a depiction of what is happening to most children in India, all of them going missing. Also, when you watch the trailer it gives the term of genre away by putting more attention on the second part of the film more than the first part.

            The film also includes the approach audience reception mainly because it is focused on more elderly and older audiences then younger ones to kind of make a way to connect the audience with Saroo. As you watch the film some of the audience can relate very well because as Saroo is separated from his actual mother then adopted to a new family, he feels very emotional and determined about finding his mother and brother. Just as most people struggle with divorce living with a new family member later or early on in life which can be a struggle for most people today. It is a good film for the audience to relate to a situation that some struggle with today.

            What I noticed in the trailers of his television episodes he directed of both Love My Way & Top of the Lake, they were similar in genre because these were very dramatic films. What was similar was in the shows they all shared the same audience reception which is what Garth Davis carried on later on to Lion. These shows were about separation each in a different feeling for example in Love My Way when a group of thirty people struggle with separation of their parents and how they have to deal with these tragedies. How this relates in Lion is the concept of separation and being alone which Garth borrowed from his episodes of Love My Way. In Top of the Lake what this show is about it’s about a detective trying to find a twelve-year-old daughter that has disappeared. Later on, in the season the title added China Girl where this time the detective is looking into the death of an Asian girl. What this one also has similar too is the again the concept of the disappearance of a other characters within the story. Follows the same formula again as Love My Way and later on into Lion.    

            When you look at the narrative design of the film it just focuses on Saroo, the main character of the film. What the director didn’t shy away from this narrative and thought of this film as a challenge for a feature-length narrative (Rodriguez 12). As the film starts out the first part we are with young Saroo, who has fun with his brother in India enjoying his life. He then falls asleep on a train and later gets adopted. Once he gets older he wants to see his real mother and brother, to know who they really are. The narrative is very distinctive within this film and there are two halves emotionally compelling and increasingly flaccid (Kemp 79). What Kemp is trying to say as when you watch the film the emotionally compelling side. The first part you are seeing Saroo’s family, then it leads to a scary horrific moment when he wakes up in an empty train station and is miles from home. Then after that twenty years go by and we see Saroo grown and in college but is trying to go back home and it just lingers throughout the whole film.

            Many factors have contributed towards this film a lot but the most significant was the editing, production design and sound. For editing the scene when Saroo is searching on Google Earth was very emotionally engaging (Gray 25). It also had artificial lighting and darkness to add the full dramatic effect. Every time Saroo would open his laptop search Google Earth for his home and marking the locations of the train stations the lighting was very dramatic and dark tone almost. For sound design the scenes that really stick out is when Saroo is in India. When you pay attention to the surrounding environment, you can tell it is very noisy and the streets and cars passing by are all recorded together. In Tim Gray’s article, he can recall that the sound mixer Nakul Kamte was a genius on how he can get amazing sounds and he recalls how the sound editor Robert Mackenzie made the sound a whole other character (Gray 25). Which during the whole time you watch the film there was not a whole lot of background noise and it is very unique in a way.

             Even though this was Garth Davis first feature film, he has shown examples of genre and audience reception. For being an up and coming director he does know how to grasp the Corrigan approaches. Also, he knows how what audience to seek out in this film and the television shows with certain dramatic tones of separation, loneliness and being solo. His future films would probably be very similar in these approaches.

Works Cited

A., L. “Lion.” New Yorker, vol. 92, no. 49, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 15. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=121094080&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Gray, Tim. “’Lion’ Tamer Gives Praise to his Crew.” Variety, vol. 334, no. 13, 06 Jan. 2017, pp. 24-25. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ibh&AN=120582961&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Judah, Tara. “Worlds Away.” Metro, no. 192, Mar. 2017, p. 6. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=123005856&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Kemp, Philip. “Lion.” Sight & Sound, vol. 27, no. 2, Feb. 2017, p.79. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=120667559&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Lion. Dir. Garth Davis. Weinstein Company, 2016. Film

Rodriguez, Briana. “Garth Davis, “Lion.” Back Stage (1946-5440), vol. 57, no. 46, 17 Nov. 2016, p.12 EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bgsu.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ibh&AN=119549107&site=ehost-live&scope=site.