Film
The multi-award nominated, and much talked about movie, Lion, is now available on disc. Based on the true story of a five year old Indian boy who is separated from his brother and becomes lost on the chaotic streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from his home. Through sheer willpower, he survives many frightening challenges until he is eventually adopted by a couple from Australia.
25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family, back in India. This journey itself, proving to be fraught with challenges, both physical and emotional.
The boy, Saroo, played as a child by Sunny Pawar and when older by Dev Patel (Chappie), is one of those characters that garners instant like from an audience. Feeling every emotion, as one both empathises with him, and seeks to help him. The performances delivered by these two are nothing short of astounding, bringing the young and older together, forming one composite character.
Ably supported by the talents of Nicole Kidman, as step-mother Sue Brierley and Rooney Mara (Her) as friend Lucy, the ensemble are a talented mix.
Mix with this, some great cinematography, a gripping story, a true one at that, and Lion makes for riveting viewing, peppered with much emotion. A fantastic tale of overcoming, survival, and love, showing how we as humans can help those in desperate need, or take advantage of the less fortunate.
Lion is an excellent film, and most certainly deserves the amounts of high praise it receives. It is most deserving of the nominations it received, including best film at the Oscars. Lion could not be recommended enough. A must see.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a high technical quality, with an excellent film as the main feature. There are no special features, but would those really be missed with a film of this calibre?
Lion is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate. There are no visible artefacts on-screen. There is no visible colour bleed, and detail is maintained in darker scenes.
Viewers with the relevant hardware or software can scale up to a larger, or higher resolution screen, should they wish.
Audio
Audio is encoded at a high average bitrate. Dialogue is clear via the centre speaker, with the weight of the soundtrack carried by the front channels.
There is a choice between a Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0 mix. The surround channels are used to effect in certain scenes, in order to expand the on-screen world, and further draw the viewer into the story. But, given the drama genre of the film, there is not an over use of these channels.
Navigation
Main navigation is simple, and easy to use. The main menu is a static one, with accompanying music. There are text links to play the main feature, select chapters, and choose audio.
The chapters sub-menu has four motion, colour thumbnails, which are numbered. These are however not accompanied by any sort of description, so an amount of guesswork would be involved in trying to navigate to a particular section of the main feature.
The audio sub-menu offers only choices for a 5.1 or 2.0 soundtrack mix.
Bonus Features
There are unfortunately no bonus features on the disc, other than trailers for Denial, Jackie and the game Lego Star Wars: Rogue One, that auto-play at the beginning of the disc. There is no way to access these again, from the disc, other than re-inserting it into the player.
These trailers can be fast-forwarded, but not individually skipped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJQtPjIk0GY
