Lion Page #19

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CLOSE:
gently, carefully, Saroo places the old Ganesh

medallion in the palm of Mantosh’s hand.

He closes Mantosh’s fist around the medallion.

EXT. PEBBLY BEACH NEAR MANTOSH’S SHED - DAWN

Saroo steps outside into the freezing morning. No one about.

Not a sound. Not a bird. Just the WILD WIND and the small

gnarly steel-grey WAVES hitting the shore.

HARD CUT:

EXT. PEBBLY BEACH, TIDELINE - CONTINUOUS

Saroo, a tiny figure, walks down to the water’s edge.

He strips off - and starts to walk into the water... stopping

as the pain of the cold kicks in... the endless horizon

beyond.

He looks back at the shed -Mantosh will not survive without

him.

He spots Guddu, looking vulnerable, worried, is he losing

Saroo?...

His locked stare with Guddu. A deep breath from Saroo

-Guddu looks alarmed, as if he wants to stop Saroo -

-Saroo DIVES.

UNDERWATER - fluid, peaceful, muffled. Saroo’s wild hair

flowing.

He comes up - roaring - oh, the shock! - his wild wet mane

SAROO:

ROAAAARRRGGHHH!

Roaring in pain. Grief. Anger. Knowing he can’t go on.

Roaring his past away. BIG emotional moment, then in its

wake...

Guddu is gone.

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - NIGHT

Saroo steps up to the wall. All its madness in front of him.

He reaches for a flag pin. Pulls it out. What’s he doing?

He stabs it back into the map - to a totally different part

of India. Way outside the search radius.

Then with both hands, he starts pulling out flag pins,

stabbing them anywhere. Jumbling them up. Pins everywhere.

There are pins now all over the place. Pakistan. The

Himalayas.

He’s just deliberately ruined a year or two of painstaking

work. Making certain it’s over, and there’s no turning back.

Casually, he SWIPES at a section of printouts spreading out

from the main map, scotch-taped together. In a domino effect,

other printouts tear away. More flag pins go flying. A mess.

He leans his head against the wall.

Saroo slumps down on the couch. End of the road. He has to

move on too.

Over on the Wall: that mess he’s just made.

The laptop sits open on the couch. He leans across, places

his finger on the trackpad, follows a train line -

-then starts to flick the track pad, faster. So that before

the station has time to reach full resolution -

he flicks again, carelessly, without method.

And suddenly - it’s a kind of goodbye - he veers off the rail

line completely - out over land - and more land -

doing on the SCREEN what he just did on the WALL

-random shifts, here, there, left, right. Jerky. EVERYTHING

starts cascading in his psyche, as his memories make their

final fight for life. So we see MAD SNIPPETS and FLASHES:

GUDDU - COAL THEFT - DAM - JOY - UNDERPASS - STREETS -

WATERMELON ACCIDENT - HIDE AND SEEK WITH SHEKILA AND KAMLA.

- and on and on it goes - interwoven with the Google Earth

search on screen, as Saroo carelessly continues flicking the

cursor, saying goodbye to the search as his past and his

memories disintegrate into fragments He

stops. Exhausted. His face perfectly blank. Equally

randomly now, he tap-tap-taps on that “Zoom Out” minus sign.

He ZOOMS OUT, higher. Higher. We’re now staring down on a

good chunk of India.

Scrolling, Saroo flicks quite a distance left. Still just

random moves. We are now way outside the search perimeter.

Nothing matters. Flick, flick. Who cares?

And then:
something stops him. He tilts his head

ON THE SCREEN:
an expanse of ochre fields.

He pulls the laptop onto his thighs. Something about that

COLOR. Still as the Sphinx, he stares at the screen.

HIGH AERIAL ABOVE FIELDS - (DAY)

- matching the Google Earth, but real: we’re hovering above a

real ochre landscape. STILL. We can hear nature - the

tickling of the grass, the whole earth vibrating.

[NOTE:
this shot should also recognizably MATCH the landscape

of the 4000-feet-above-India shot, those parched ochre fields

from the opening AERIALS...]

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

Saroo shivers. The sound of the gentle wind over him. Just

staring at that screen.

EXT. FIELD NEAR DAM, KHANDWA - DAY (FLASHBACK)

CLOSE on little Saroo’s hand, scavenging through the trash,

at that moment the YELLOW BUTTERFLY lands on it.

As he carefully stands, and spreads his arms:

PANORAMIC WIDE of an ochre landscape. Full of yellow

butterflies.

The YELLOW is fluttering, fluttering, and starts FILLING THE

FRAME.

AUDIO:
very faintly a haunting refrain rises: the lullaby

little Amita sang that long-ago night in Liluah.

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

The lullaby carries over to the present - we’re back with

Saroo - more ALERT - scrolling on the Google screen -

We scroll over fields. Villages. Then a railway line.

He does what he’s always done: trace the tracks to find the

next station.

-A FLASH:
POV FROM MOVING TRAIN (from when he was trapped)

of those WIDE OCHRE FIELDS -

He keeps scrolling, scrolling. And soon enough: the train

line enters a mid-sized TOWN.

We’re over the centre of the town. He zooms in closer.

The Google Earth blue railway station symbol, hovering.

The rail lines. The platform.

Closer in. Closer.

And then, on Saroo: Huh. What’s that?

ON GOOGLE EARTH SCREEN: it’s blurry. But it looks a little

like a water tower.

Saroo blinks, looking at it. Zooming in. His head tilts:

-this water tower, getting a little clearer as he zooms.

SAROO’S “MEMORY MAP”: FLASHBACK 1 - WATER TOWER (NIGHT)

Little Saroo alone on the deserted platform. Where’s Guddu?

Saroo shivers, holding himself. He looks up. At the tower.

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

Saroo, sitting up straight. Looking as spooked as that child.

ON SCREEN:
it’s a WATER TOWER. It’s certainly similar.

Saroo leans in closer to the screen. His finger touches the

platform. And the water tower. Working out the angles.

SAROO’S “MEMORY MAP”: FLASHBACK 1 - WATER TOWER (NIGHT)

We PUSH IN on little Saroo, standing frightened on that

haunted platform, looking up at the water tower off-screen.

REVERSE:
we PUSH IN on the water tower.

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

ON SCREEN:
zooming, closer, closer. The satellite resolution

becoming clearer. That’s a tower. That’s the water tower.

The pixels coarsen and blur as the zoom reaches its limit.

SAROO:

(a breath)

It can’t be -

Saroo actually cups his hands over his mouth.

His back is ramrod straight. His nerves on fire -

and suddenly, frantically, he scrolls, scrolls, scrolls -

AERIAL - OCHRE FIELDS - DAY

High in the air, we RUSH across the Indian landscape

INT. LIVING ROOM, BEACH HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (NIGHT)

[NOTE:
CONTINUE RAPID INTERWEAVING BETWEEN THE HIGH AERIAL

GLIDES & THE GOOGLE SCREEN SCROLLING ...]

- ON GOOGLE EARTH SCREEN: as he scrolls, the pointer races

across the landscape in jerks: across ochre fields, across

rivers, roads ... sometimes the train line is on screen and

sometimes not - because Saroo’s not following the track now -

he knows where he’s going -

he’s going HERE:

-it’s a DAM. Holy sh*t. It’s a dam.

SAROO’S “MEMORY MAP”: FLASHBACK 2 - DAM (DAY)

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