I just watched this movie that, for some reason, had completely passed me by. Apparently based on a true story:
A five-year-old Indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple after getting lost hundreds of kilometers from home. 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Strange description, since the first half of the movie is him as a poor boy in an Indian slum, stealing food for survival and then getting lost. Somehow he ends up on a train that ends in Kolkata, not knowing the name of where he grew up or how to ever get back there. Life on the streets, orphanage, lots of Hindi and Bengali etc. The second half of the money is his adult life in Australia, with his adoptive parents and studies and professional career and girlfriend—whom he gets progressively estranged from as his origin eats at him.
Spending years and many late nights with train schedules and Google Earth he finally finds his childhood village and goes to find his mother.
So it's Slumdog Millionaire for about an hour, an Australian-inspired romcom for an hour—and then ten minutes pure crying as Saroo walks his old streets and woods before being reunited with his mother and baby sister.
I can't exactly explain why this movie hit me so deeply just now, but it did: Perhaps it's just a matter of right time, right moment, and—like any piece of art—something just hits.
The Sia soundtrack song ("Never Give Up") doesn't hurt either.
Will always love Dev Patel from when played Neal Sampat in The Newsroom. Total Daniel Radcliffe/Elijah Wood situation: those guys can never really play another else in their career.