And once again, the marketing misleads us. The trailer for The Lunchbox pretty much gives away the story, which is about Ila (the superb Nimrat Kaur) and Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan) exchanging notes through the lunch dabbas she packs for him and falling in love. Watching the cutesy clips in the coming-attractions segment, I was led to expect a heartwarming and lightweight rom-com, like You’ve Got Mail or its marvellous inspiration, The Shop Around the Corner. After all, the surface is all gooey and rom-commy. There’s that premise, first, about two lonely people finding companionship. Ila’s neighbour, Deshpande Aunty, is the BFF character, doing double-duty as fairy godmother. Her cooking tips enhance Ila’s efforts to impress her husband (Nakul Vaid) who stares at the TV during dinner. (The much older Saajan, during dinner, prefers to read a book.) And there’s the whole arc about the curmudgeon finding love and beginning to love life again. As his relationship with Ila blossoms, Saajan gives up smoking, learns to tolerate the bratty neighbourhood kids, and invites a colleague (Shaikh, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) to share his lunch. With all this, The Lunchbox does seem to be the film the trailer promised.
But the director Ritesh Batra is after something else altogether – and it’s not just in the way he shoots, with long takes, without much cutting, leaving the actors free to enter and exit the frames. (A rom-com would never tolerate such “naturalism.”) Saajan – who’s a little too cutely named – is a widower. Ila’s husband, on the other hand, might as well be dead. He barely notices that his wife can still fit into the clothes she wore during her honeymoon. Saajan’s days are filled in crammed buses and trains, and in an office whose ordinariness is crushing. (There are no computers; just files everywhere.) Ila cooks, cleans, washes clothes – the ordinariness, the routine, of her life is equally crushing. Saajan has no friends. He has his lunch all by himself. Even the colleague beside him doesn’t seem to speak to him. Ila’s only friend appears to be the much older Deshpande Aunty, who lives upstairs and who never comes down. She’s just a voice. These are sad lives, and the communication between Saajan and Ila reveals itself to be equally sad. They’re so desperate to talk to someone, anyone, and they settle for scribbling stray thoughts into a note folded into a lunch dabba. Saajan says, “I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to.” This is what the film is about. Try selling that in a trailer.
The Lunchbox is a fascinating mix of fact and fiction, documentary-like realism and flights of poetic whimsy. As the film opens, we see life-as-is, in and around Mumbai’s train stations – trains rolling in, passengers clogging the platform, little boys polishing the shoes of office-goers, and, most relevantly to this story, the full circle of the dabbawala’s day, from picking up lunch at home to loading it on a train to delivering it at the office, where a peon makes sure that the dabbas reach the right person. (That, despite this, Ila’s dabba ends up with Saajan instead of her husband is one of the conceits – or contrivances – we have to take for granted. When her husband tells Ila that the aloo gobi was good, when she made something else, wouldn’t she express instant surprise or shock? Wouldn’t she tell him, “What do you mean… aloo gobi?” But then, there would be no movie.) Batra takes us into the trains, where we see people singing devotional songs and chopping vegetables and offering their seats to older-looking men. The relationship between Ila and Deshpande Aunty, with them shouting to each other, is recognizably prosaic and middle-class. And the scenes in Saajan’s office leave us in little doubt about what it must be like in there (and what it must have been like for him to spend 35 years in there).
The romance is set against this realistic core. This isn’t just the romance between Saajan and Ila, but also the romance in the language in their letters, the romanticizing – if you will – of their loneliness. She writes in Hindi. He writes in starched English. (With Shaikh, though, he speaks in Hindi.) At first, his letters are as out-of-sync with social norms and graces as he is (and is there anyone better than Irrfan Khan at portraying alienation?) – he tells her, bluntly, that the food was too salty, and another time he says the food was so spicy that he had to have two bananas, which are “good for motions.” But gradually, he remembers what it’s like to talk to someone, and he hits his stride. In one profoundly moving letter, he writes about a man who paints the same thing every time, but in every painting, there’s just a little bit that’s different. He could be talking about his life.
Ila’s letters are equally evocative. And Batra does something magical here, literally. When Ila writes about a ceiling fan that stopped when the power went off, Saajan looks up at the fan over him, and it stops. The other fans in the office are on. Is this… magic? Magical realism? Is this part of the same cosmic conspiracy that caused her dabba to land up at his desk? This becomes a motif. Ila and Saajan may be separated by distance, but – like in the scene with that fan – his life spills over into hers, and hers into his. Urchins on his train sing Pardesi pardesi jaana nahin and Mera dil bhi kitna paagal hai – the songs are carefully chosen; they’re both strangers, pardesis, and the latter song is from a film that has his name as its title – and she hears these songs playing on Deshpande Aunty’s tape recorder. He waves at what appears to be a fly in front of his face, and she, at home, repeats this action. He’s stalled in traffic because a woman jumped off a terrace, and she hears this news on the radio. She finds her grandma’s recipes in a dairy, and he finds his wife’s old videocassettes, with recordings of old TV shows. And they both find themselves with a line that states that, sometimes, the wrong train can help you reach the right destination.
Saajan hears this line from Shaikh, a smarmy young go-getter who’s going to replace him when he retires in a month – and, slowly, The Lunchbox becomes the story of two relationships. The first, of course, is the one between Saajan and Ila, and the second, between Saajan and Shaikh, is more affecting because it’s less sentimental and manipulative (even if this manipulation, in the case of Saajan and Ila, is done very classily). At first, Saajan seems to resent Shaikh, who’s everything he’s not. Saajan is punctual, disciplined, courteous, aloof – Shaikh is the opposite. But gradually, as we learn more about Shaikh, we warm to him, as Saajan does. (It helps that Siddiqui, with apparent effortlessness, delivers the film’s best performance. Khan is excellent, but he’s begun to effect a bit of Meryl Streepish fussiness in his acting. We sometimes catch him “acting.”) Shaikh knows as much about loneliness as Saajan or Ila, for he grew up an orphan. And we see that that blustery, over-obsequious self he presents to people is probably something he’s developed over time, to get along with people. He gets the film’s best arc, transforming from an annoying little fool (at least in our eyes) to a man who ends up with some much-deserved happiness, even if it comes with a scooter plastered with roses.
The missteps are few. Some of the poetry is a tad too precious. People can’t be writing and speaking like this all the time. A bit about Bhutan didn’t work for me at all, and a scene with Ila’s mother (a miscast Lillete Dubey), after her husband’s death, rings false. It’s wonderful when she says, at first, that she’s hungry and she craves parathas. It’s such a naturally odd response to a tragedy. But then she states that this is such an odd response to a tragedy, spelling out what we have already registered. The character comes across far better in her only other scene, a ruthlessly practical scene (with no poetry), where she slyly hints to Ila that she’s going to need money for her husband’s monthly medical expenses. The shifting dynamics are pitch perfect. First Ila keeps offering money, and her mother keeps refusing (while sighing melodramatically that had her son been alive, this conversation wouldn’t have been necessary), but then, when the mother accepts the offer, Ila is dumbfounded, as if she realises she’s been played.
These other characters breathe some much-needed air into the central romance, which, after a point, could have become a little claustrophobic. I wish something more had been done about Ila’s suspicion that her husband is having an affair. As with the revelation that he enjoyed her “aloo gobi,” here too she doesn’t seem to react much at all. But the biggest misstep is the end, which should have come after the scene at the restaurant where Ila and Saajan plan to meet. We see what she does. We see what he does. That’s all that’s needed to close this story (with a lovely line about letting one into your dreams) – but Batra, suddenly, seems to want to live up to that trailer, and we get all rom-commy again, with missed connections and what not. Except, it’s all quite sad, and this delicate film cannot bear the weight of these labored contrivances. For a second, my heart stopped, thinking there was going to be one of those railway-station climaxes. Thankfully, no. Then again, that could have been the movie the trailer promised.
Copyright ©2013 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Utkal
September 22, 2013
It’s quite uncanny how I I felt exactly the same way I felt about the film. In my immediate reaction, I for got to mention about the painter who paints the same scene with minor variations, the wrong note struck by Lilette Dubey in repeating the bit about her being hungry and yes, the biggest, mistep, the bit about her going to Bhutan. I would have liked the film to have ended with her telling the dabbawala to make sure it goes to the right address or some such point and going on with her life.
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Utkal
September 22, 2013
The Lunchbox: The wrong train taking you to the right place
That The Lunchbox would be a good film, was never in doubt when I booked my ticket. ( One can sense these things.) But how good, and in what ways good were the questions in my mind. Well first thing first, the film is every inch as good as it is being made out to be. So that gets ‘ How good’ out of the way.
Now to ‘ In what ways’ good…
Everyone to whom the film would be of interest knows what it is about – two lonely people making that connection. And a miscarried dabba is the cupid here. But there are so many things beyond this basic premise that makes the film special.
Firstly, it is tremendously entertaining and moving. You will laugh out loud at many places. And you will shed a tear at others. But there are passages which will make you think too. There are many strands of philosophical thought left hanging for you to weave your questions around. In fact the philosophical subtexts it introduces are no less than in a film like Ship of Theseus.
Then there is the plotting and balancing of characters. Saajan Fernandez, Ila, Aslam Sheik, and Deshpande Aunty are the right pieces of the jigsaw that fit together so aptly to create a fascinating tableau of human connection. Each character is quirky, with a visible inner life and full of positive energy. Aunty has a husband who went into coma, fifteen years back and now stares at the Orient fan all through the day. She also has a comprehensive collection of old Hindi film songs, on cassettes. Saajan Fernandez is a decent, slightly abrasive man reaching the end of his career as some kind of an accountant. He lost his wife quite some time back. He watches old TV serials like Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi that she recorded, reminisces about how he used to be in the balcony smoking cigarette or repairing his bi-cycle, watching her laughs at the same joke for the nth time, and wonders why he did not keep watching her for longer time. Aslam Sheik is rooky appointed to learn the ropes from Mr Fernandez so he can take his place when the latter retires. He is an orphan…but throws around aphorisms that start with, “ Meri mummy ne kaha karti thi..” simply because they sound weightier that way. He cuts vegetables on office files and cooks as soon as he reaches home to feed his beautiful wife Meherunnisa ( When the big boss blows his top at the total mess that Sheik has made of claim calculations and adds that the files smell of onion, garlic and sundry vegetables, Sheik sheepishly promises to Fernandez that he will cover the files with plastic before cutting vegetables next time.) And yes, Ila. What would the film do without her? She is the yin to Fernandez’s yang. She is the passion willing to break free in contrast to Fernandez’s restraint. She is the one who loves to cook the recipes that Deshpande Aunty shouts out from the room upstairs. She is the one who wonders if there is anything more to life than the Orient fan, and then whispers to herself , If not..toh jeeye kyon?
The aesthetics of the film follow the Iranian minimalistic gharana, where , to quote Saeed Mirza speaking about Nirad Mohapatra’s ‘ Maya Miriga’, ‘reality is stretched till the cracks show.’ In a way it also follows the way of the Zen where one is forever observant, at every minutiae, considering nothing unimportant. The orange-tinged tea that Ila drinks, the swell of the chapati being blown up on the flame, the Mumbai rains, the Tukaram songs that the dabbawalas sing in the compartment, the kameez that Ila wore on her honeymoon ( which fails to arouse the passion of husband Rajeev now)…everything. Everyday actions like Ila flinging Rajeev’s shirts into the washing machine and office goers making do with two bananas for lunch gets suffused with significance that cannot be fully articulated. .
Thankfully, in a film of supposedly small canvas, the world is not restricted to the lovers’ hearts alone. Through Deshpande aunty and her comatose husband, Ila’s father who is dying of lung cancer, Ila’s mother who is trying so hard not to borrow money from her daughter but manages to mention a figure of 5,000 at last ( I instantly trust filmmakers who bring money into the storytelling and my respect goes up a few notches when they get to mention specific amounts.); Ritesh Batra shows us , he is not all wrapped around the two lead characters , however compelling their story might be. I love the scene immediately after Ila’s father’s death, with Ila’s mother first telling Ila that she feels very hungry as she had not had breakfast and she wished she could have some parathas and the says a little later. “ I used to always worry what will I do after your papa is gone. But now I am just hungry!”
There is humour in every frame…from the furtive looks that Fernandez gives before beginning to read the notes tucked between chapatis to the photo session at Sheik’s wedding, where the bride’s side are supposed to stand on the right and the groom’s side on the left, notwithstanding the fact th
There are many pleasures to be had in the film. The stark, yet elegant cinematography of Michael Simmonds ( who I am told is the DoP of Iranian filmmaker, Ramin Bahrani) , the use of sound ( note the Tukaram bhajan played out with full gusto during the end credits) and the beauty of each spoken line. But on par with all these is the sheer pleasure of watching two of the greatest actors of our times, Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the same frame, scene after scene. The old master and the young disciple clash is an archetype that has been used in so many films, both commercial and art house ( Ship of Theseus being the recent example); but these two geniuses take the characters away from any kind of stereotypes with the measured quirkiness of their performances. What faces! I mean there are charismatic stars, there are good actors. But there is something in the faces of Irrfan and Nawazuddin that hold in them the entire emotional alphabet of human experience, angst and emotions. It is to debutant Nimrat Kaur’s credit that she more than holds her own against these two seasoned players, creating yet another strong woman character to have emerged out of Bollywood this year.
One can sense the influence of Iranian films on The Lunchbox, but where the film departs from Iranian minimalism is in the sheer poetry of the notes sent by Ila and Fernandez , mostly the notes of Fernandez. Ila writes in Hindi, Fernandez in English. Ila’s language is more down to earth, but Fernandez is more poetic. And it is not the flowery verbiage that passes off as poetry in many Hindi films, but the genuine stuff, capturing the most delicate inflections of human emotions with the lightest of touch. Take the last note that he sends Ila ( as close as I can remember) : “ I went back to my house from the train when I realized I forgotten something in the bathroom. As I entered the bathroom I could smell my grandfather. My grandfather! No, it was just me that I was smelling. When had I turned that old? Maybe that very morning . Or maybe many mornings ago. As the motion of daily life ( now he is actually on the local train, while the lines are being read) carried me forward throwing me to the left sometimes, and sometimes to the right, I surely had turned old. Or else I would have remembered what I had come to the bathroom looking for’. She tells him about Bhutan that her daughter had learnt in class, the place that measures , not Gross Domestic Product, but Gross National Happiness. He tells her about an old lady that surprised him ( pleasantly?) by touching him ‘there’ in a crowded local train. He tells her once, ‘We forget so many things because we have no one to tell them to’. ( Perhaps the reason I write such detailed reviews of films that I love, lest I forget them!)
Now to the philosophy of the film , or the message that many go searching for in a film, without revealing what really happens , is that of optimism, of everyone’s right to look for romance, for happiness, which sometimes can only be had, not through consummation, but by letting go. Kyunki kabhi kabhi galat train bhi aadmi ko sahi jagah pahuncha deti hai. In The Mood For Love anyone?
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Nidhi
September 22, 2013
The scene at Sheikh’s house when Saajan tells him he might not be retiring after all. Nawaz’s reaction – what seems like genuine happiness – brought a lump to my throat. At that moment, you realize he probably doesn’t have too many people in his life whom he loves. What an actor this Nawaz is! Even in a small role like this, he makes his presence felt.
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Rahul
September 22, 2013
I did not read the whole review, just skimmed through it. Any similarities to WKW ‘s “In the mood for love.” by any chance?
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Nidhi
September 22, 2013
Irrfan’s English is sounding more and more foreign everyday. Is it for the benefit of his international audiences? I don’t know. It was far too distracting here. In a film like Life Of Pi, it’s easier to ignore that weird accent.
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anuradha
September 22, 2013
A gem of a film wrapped in a delicious dabba. It weaved in the magic with the mundane and just like the protaganist and the painting, we see the same things in a slightly different way.Besides the two brilliant male actors, what a quiet powerhouse performance by the actor who played Ila. She carried the film on her shoulders.
I felt her reaction to the husband’s affair was natural-it seemed in character as in a way, she seems to have moved past him by stepping into a “wrong train”.
Yes thought the film would have ended in that restaraunt scene but its nice that it wandered a little,threw in bhutan for good measure and still left you with a lump in the throat.In the multiplex we went to, people sat in silence till the end of the credits.
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Sakkaravarthi Kaliannan
September 22, 2013
On an unrelated note, have you watched “The Good Road”, India’s official entry for the Oscars?
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Utkal
September 22, 2013
Nidhi: Yes, Irrrfan’s accent si not likely the one Fernandez would have. But neither would the language of the lines are likely to be his. There si poetic licence in both. And It kind of works. You have to take it as his inner voice than the real voice….or something in between.
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Porto
September 22, 2013
I too liked Nawaz’s acting much more. He was perfect, to the extent that he even carried off his character’s very slight lisp perfectly (did anyone else notice?)….as if he had spent years tryingt to hide the lisp but it still came out sometimes…sublime and not exaggerated at all.
Ps: Utkal…pls get your own blog dude. Your filling up the comments section such that it takes ages to scroll through a few other comments is not done. Plus your writing is, at the best of times, tedious…so its not like you add any value to this blog. I always, consistently give up reading your comment after 2 sentences (i swear i genuinely try to read them)…
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vinjk
September 23, 2013
Porto- totally agree with you about Utkal’s writing and his choice of place to publish it.
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Jimmy
September 23, 2013
Mr Rangan, why do you get excessively nit-picky with good movies and unabashedly lenient with the bad ones? Going by this review, you would think Lunchbox is on a par with Chennai Express.
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brangan
September 23, 2013
Nidhi: All of Nawaz’s scenes left me with a solid emotional reaction, including the way he says goodbye to “Ila madam” at the end. The way he does the small things is… delicious.
Rahul: Not really. That sense of “forbidden” love — with its “what if we get caught?” element of danger — isn’t here at all.
Sakkaravarthi Kaliannan: Nope. This is the first I heard of the film.
Porto/vinjk: Whether it’s this review or someone’s comments or pretty much anything online, the easy thing to do is just ignore it if it doesn’t work for you, no?
Jimmy: I don’t know if nit-picky is the word, but yes, every film sets it own bar, and if the bar is low, we watch it with that in mind and if the bar is high then we evaluate the film with that in mind. Does a film set out to do what it wants to do (at least the way you see it)? That’s what I try to go by.
Also, where does this review give the sense of this not being a good film? Genuinely curious.
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Dipayan
September 23, 2013
The song that kept playing in my mind after I watched the movie – Simon & Garfunkel’s ” A most peculiar man”. That song could have been written for Saajan Fernandes
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Utkal
September 23, 2013
Jimmy / BR: I think the only significant reservation about the film in the review are :”A bit about Bhutan didn’t work for me at all, and a scene with Ila’s mother (a miscast Lillete Dubey), after her husband’s death, rings false. ” The rest of the review point towards the film being of a very high quality. The bit about the ‘ marketing misleading us and the “the director Ritesh Batra being after something else altogether’ is used in the most positive sense, implying that the film is much more than a just a sweet love story, both in its content and the form of its storytelling. .
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Shivam M (@Observer68)
September 23, 2013
So can you answer the most awaited question, even though how non-objective and irrelevant it might sound.. “Ship of Theseus or Lunchbox”? Curious 🙂
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UPN EarnesTaster
September 23, 2013
Talk about synchrony. We thought of pretty much the same things when i wrote my review on sept.20. Still, yours was the most refreshing review i read (no surprises there) and still you remind me of Roger Ebert (i suspect i will never stop making that comparison) I did not spend much time thinking about why Ila does not act on suspicions about her husband’s probable affair, , because she herself goes deeper and deeper (and she knows this) into a morally questionable escapade of her own, and perhaps in her mind she is already thinking of what extent she might go to, once she meets Fernandez. We may grant that her intentions might still be audaciously platonic, but again, she looks at her beautiful best at the Irani cafe, as if she is sparing no effort to break her Saajan’s heart 🙂
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Rahul
September 23, 2013
Thanks BR , saw the film yesterday. Yes, its definitely not WKW style. I thought of WKW because of the extra marital unrequited romance + the theme of the lunch box. (In Ìn the mood `for love they run into each other again and again while buying noodle soup.)
Here is a quote from Ritesh Batra-“It’s better to be a best version of you than to be an inferior Quentin Tarantino or Wong Kar Wai,” I agree with Utkal Mohanty that there are similarities to Persian neo realism but the final product is more polished than a typical Persian (new wave) film. I am talking of directors like Jafar Panahi.(Offside,Crimson Gold) It also helps that he got two of the best actors in the country, who will come across as fully realized even if they are appearing in a documentary.There is,also, some of that Wong Kar Wai like poetic sensibility going on, where what we see is not ALWAYS a recollection of events in a conventional narrative but what is happening inside the directors head (or what he chooses to document for reasons best known to him).
So,I do not consider the sometimes elaborately articulate and poetic language of Saajan a misstep.Nor do I find Ila’s non reaction to her husband’s affair problematic. (the reaction may or may not have happened , its not relevant to the film). In fact, as brilliant as Nawaz was, I am wondering whether his character was necessary. I would have been happy with Saajan and Ila writing long letters to each other, reading them against long takes and languid shots of the city. But then I went in expecting a WKW like movie.
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Vk
September 23, 2013
I disagree about the ending. The movie is about sad people, but it doesn’t take itself seriously enough to end with the two of them staring into the middle distance. These are people who are finally doing something about their loneliness, and to take that away from them would be silly. Bhutan otoh was a mistake. Like you say, it’s the manipulativeness of the entire idea:from gross national happiness to the jewellery scene at the end (was it only me, or did other people react with a deep dread that the director was going to wreck an hour’s effort? That was my overriding emotion then… :-/)
Nawazuddin siddiqui’s character is genius. Less fool than Uriah heep, was how I saw him first. But the way he defied my stereotyping was wonderful. His acting I found less noteworthy. She stole the show, IMO.
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adiarya
September 23, 2013
Could it all have been a dream, the extended ending you are talking about. After all we never saw him alight the train to Nasik. The scooter plastered with roses days after the marriage, Ila repeating how indian rupee is worth five bhutanese ones. The neighborhood kids suddenly warming upto him makes the proceedings a little too utopian in contrast to the grounded realities of the past hour or so.In fact in the brief transition between the final visuals and the credits, I feared it will cutback to sajan on the train to nasik (a la 25th hour), which to me was reasonable enough to expect in light of the “letting one into others dream” letter.
But then again ‘could it have been a dream’ has been making greater movies out of lesser ones since Taxi Driver.
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Nidhi
September 24, 2013
Porto: I noticed the lisp too but there are just so many things I love about his performance that I forgot about it. 😀 This is turning into a love letter to Nawaz.
Random aside: the three lead characters are Christian, Hindu and Muslim. Perhaps deliberate in trying to emphasize Mumbai’s diversity.
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Nikhil R
September 24, 2013
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the presumed successor to Irrfan Khan as ‘serious actor’ in ‘non-mainstream films’ playing an accountant set to take over job duties from Khan’s character – can’t decide if this is a nice touch or a little bit too precious. 🙂
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Utkal
September 24, 2013
Adiarya: Could it all have been a dream, the extended ending you are talking about.
Nidhi: The three lead characters are Christian, Hindu and Muslim. Perhaps deliberate in trying to emphasize Mumbai’s diversity.
Nikhil R: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the presumed successor to Irrfan Khan as ‘serious actor’ in ‘non-mainstream films’ playing an accountant set to take over job duties from Khan’s character.
EPN: Ila does not act on suspicions about her husband’s probable affair, , because she herself goes deeper and deeper (and she knows this) into a morally questionable escapade of her own,
So many interesting viewpoints and ways of reading the film! Shows how multi-layered it is!.
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Sathish
September 25, 2013
The brother angle was something that was odd to the whole movie and did not work for me. For most of the dead or almost dead folks in the movie, their faces are not shown. Neither the uncle upstairs staring at the fan, or the father or the dead wife or the lady who commits suicide – their faces are not shown. (except for the brother – whose photo was shown during the discussion of his suicide). Why associate a face with this person alone when the rest of the story did not attempt to show them at all was intriguing to me. I felt that there was a personal angle to this the director is sharing (but not sharing!) – a sort of easter egg.
The whole conversation of what was the colour of the ambulance (again the comparison with the brother!) seems odd to a rather sparse storytelling.
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Jerina J
September 25, 2013
“It helps that Siddiqui, with apparent effortlessness, delivers the film’s best performance. Khan is excellent, but he’s begun to effect a bit of Meryl Streepish fussiness in his acting. We sometimes catch him “acting.”)…
Oh no…please don’t say that. Not so soon. I felt Irfan was brilliant and by that, I mean he was being so natural. Yes, Nawazuddin Siddiqui is good and earnest in the movie and he suits roles where he doesn’t have to be a blue collared guy or a rich guy. Nimrat Kaur, the bubbly Cadbury Silk girl, is also fabulous. All three gave me the feeling of seeing a slice of their life in Mumbai. There were times in the movie, seeing Ila in her synthetic salwaar kameez and uncombed hair with nails cut to the skin, that I forgot I was actually watching a ‘movie’. And the same can be said in scenes where Irfan comes in too – with his furtive glances while reading the letter to scolding Shaik without actually looking at him, as if he were embarrassed to do so. All cool.
Anyway, loved the movie and these days I have my own way of figuring out if you really liked a movie. If your blog is long, then you like the movie you are writing about ;-). It’s nice to see that you don’t waste words on movies that didn’t quite make the cut. Please don’t change that.
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Vishak Bharadwaj
September 25, 2013
Man you’ve gotta chime on the lunchbox-Good road thing… Try watching it. It’s cheap, I mean a 100 rs or something on DVD. Anurag Kashyap just deleted his Twitter account.
What’s going on?
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Utkal
September 25, 2013
Jerina J: Wholeheartedly agree. Irrfan, Nawazyddin and Nimrat were all good. But Irrfan’s was the most .accomplished and the most exquisite.
Sathish: Agree about the What colour was he ambulance bit. As Rangan has mentioned it was okay to say I feel so hungry and leave it that. Even to add the line about how I thought what I will do when your papa was gone and now all I can wry about is how hungry I am was tolerable, but not really necessary in this sparse storytelling. The bit about the ambulances is true , people do talk trivialities like this when disconcerted by death after prolonged care giving. But it was out of place. And the bit about how she hated to see his body everyday, was downright excessive in a film like this. Didn’t fit into the aesthetic grid at all.
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Kutty
September 25, 2013
A friend of mine told me today that you did not quite like the magical realism in the movie and I thought you had fallen hook, line and sinker for it, using it to defend what might seem rather strange co-incidences. So forget about movies generating contrasting readings, it appears your writing has attained that status. 🙂
Could not agree more with VK when (s)he says that she stole the show.given that he was referring to Nawazuddin in the previous line, I am a little confused and hope that it is Nimrat Kaur that is being referred to. These days getting women leads who act well is so rare that someone like Nimrat is a big relief. Therefore, for multiple reasons, it was her/her character that I was rooting for.
On a different note, I am increasingly getting frustrated with the interval concept in Indian movies. It completely breaks the flow. Especially in a movie like this where you are emotionally invested in the characters. There is a break for 15 minutes which ruins it. You have to begin the whole process again. Can the directors/producers risk cutting out intervals, especially in shorter movies and ask the theatres to run an extra show? Would that gain more revenues than the popcorn that is sold? Would really like to see some Indian director/producer try that.
And hey, no word on the food? The bunch of us who went for the movie were drooling at the food being cooked (being away from home adds to the craving) and were feeling pangs of hunger within the first 15 min. For a change, the movie does full justice to the food and that is so difficult to do!
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travellingslacker
September 25, 2013
just watched it… and yes I am a bit underwhelmed too… not a bad film of course but considering the hype surrounding it, I expected much more…
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brangan
September 26, 2013
Shivam M: Different films, though I supposed I preferred “Lunchbox.”
adiarya: The dream angle is a great thought. Someone should ask the director. But given that dream angle, I’m not sure this was the best conclusion. I mean, I agree with the extended conclusion (that this is all a dream) — just the content seemed odd.
Nidhi: OMG! Manmohan Desai was making multiplex movies before multiplexes and we never knew it 😉
Jerina J: Oh yes, she’s the one in that Cadbury’s ad. Now I know where I saw her earlier. I watched that and I thought ‘what fantastic acting.’ Have you noticed that the acting in the ads, these days is far better than what we usually get in the movies? Had this situation of aa girl stuck in a car unfolded in the movies, she’d have overdone it a bit. But in the ad, the way she looks up to acknowledge the guy in the car beside hers is so… spot on, so “oh my god, I think someone’s watching me.” She gets that just right. Also love the acting in that Tanishq ad with Swara Bhaskar. The guy is great there, pulling off one of those “too cute to be true” moments with real panache.
Vishak Bharadwaj: Have a tangential column this weekend. About Anurag Kashyap deleting his Twitter account, am reminded of that recent (and long) Jonathan Franzen rant in The Guardian 🙂
Kutty: The interval concept is a revenue generating idea, and unless it’s an Aamir Khan putting his foot down (as he did for “Dhobi Ghat”), it’s going to stay. But I must say that I didn’t have a problem with the break here because it wasn’t at an action/decision point. It was a “discovery” point, and I thought the decision to break there was a good one (I mean, assuming you *had* to break somewhere, and opposed to breaking mid-scene or something).
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Sharan (@sharanidli)
September 26, 2013
“That sense of “forbidden” love — with its “what if we get caught?” element of danger — isn’t here at all”
Its funny, but I felt fear for them throughout — I don’t know if it was the worry of being caught as much as the worry of not ending up happy. You know it is a good movie when you are truly invested in the characters’ outcomes!
I am glad Nidhi pointed out Nawaz’s reaction in that scene — did the same to me and evoked, in a smaller way, his final scene in Bombay talkies.
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adiarya
September 26, 2013
’twas a decent watch but there were so many things that didn’t work for me.
why was irfan’s english so victorian? they could have sprinkled it with a little indianness (i mean his hindi was anglicised enough)
why that laborious effort towards creating an aura of yester years. Seriously no computers in an office that big? if Sajan didn’t mention about his finding ‘old’ vcrs, I would have assumed this entire movie was set in mid eighties. (was recording live programs that easy in the eighties). Not that the angle of ‘two loners in an epistolary romance, in the age of facebook’ was explored enough.
Another thing that bugged me was we never saw Sajan writing his replies down (the other characters are concoctions of his mind?)
Food was supposed to be a central character, but just turned out to be a gimmick. We see the aroma of the food filling Sajan up, but never see him licking his fingers. The grand recipe of Deshpande aunty turned out to be a freaking daal. That scrumptious paneer kofta was mentioned as just paneer (seriously who has his favourite dish as just paneer, not makhani or kadai, just simply paneer). I thought ‘Stanley ka dabba’ managed that quite beautifully.
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travellingslacker
September 26, 2013
Nimrat fans… watch this 😛
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veena
September 27, 2013
I disagree on leaving the end unattended, as we find an end to every story we heard since childhood I was also expecting some end of this story as well.
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Radhika
September 28, 2013
The point about the brother’s suicide not being relevant – I think elements are relevant if they either propel the not propelling the story forward, or add to the character development. The brother’s suicide tells us he was worried of family stigma due to failing in the exams – an indicaiton of what kind of parenting Ila had had – of her loneliness as a kid, and perhaps how the burden of being filial had become solely hers. Later when the ambulance is discussed, Ila’s face tells you how disturbing she found her mother’s reaction, how corrosive duty had become, and maybe an indication of how she didn’t want to end up bitter and angry like her mother, hating her husband – hence her bid to snatch happiness after that. If we view the movie more as a short story than a novel, then these little vignettes add to the depth and complexity of the people.
I didn’t find the language used by Fernandes to be a problem – this is a man who has lived inside his head for a long time and so when he does write, there would be a verbosity in it that would seem odd in a younger man who grew up in the days of sms and twitter. Ila’s reaction to the affair – that didn’t trouble me either. I think she already knew something was off, and this was just a confirmation to her that her instincts were right – and it could even have ben a relief because it took her off the hook for her own mental infidelities. Which is why she doesn’t protest when he says he liked the aloo gobi – she had suspected something was wrong, her misgivings were briefly alleviated when the dubba came back empty, but when he came home indifferent to her charms, she knew she was right to have had her suspicions. I agree with you that it became more of a romance at the end, but was it really a rom-com? It had flashes of humour, no doubt, but it was more about the tragedy of two lonely people ending on a note of cautious optimism and hope – than a comedy. I thought it explored the “what if” Elenor Rigby had met and loved Father McKenzie.
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Radhika
September 28, 2013
^^ Oops, riddled with typos – sorry.
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Utkal
September 29, 2013
Radhika: “I thought it explored the “what if” Elenor Rigby had met and loved Father McKenzie. ”
That’s a wonderful thought. In fcat I was going to just post that song as my review of the film!
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Nidhi
September 29, 2013
Another thing I noticed the second time around – Ila writes her notes on 4-ruled paper, probably torn from her daughter’s old notebooks. Nice touch.
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nima
September 30, 2013
There are a few goofups though, but the biggest one is in the end, which should have come after the scene at the restaurant where Ila and Saajan meet.Also the bit about Bhutan didn’t work for me either,Lillete Dubey was a miscast,the husband having an affair was not necessary,people can be “JUST LONELY”in a metro and seek a friendship outside marriage,no justifications needed.But all in all it was beautiful film,poetry in motion picture.
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amrtha
September 30, 2013
Thank you for a fine review, it was odd that there was no confrontation. What also struck me about the movie was how there seemed to be no alternative for the woman but to replace the affection she had lost with another version of it.
I put up my views on http://amrtha.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/lunchbox-a-review/
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chiccityfashionista
October 3, 2013
Actually, I wrote my own review too, not so glowing and in a slightly different context…It’s titled “Why I Think “The Lunchbox” is Over-hyped, Archaic and Takes Indian Women Back to the Dark Ages” Check it out @ http://chiccityfashionista.blogspot.in/
Would love to hear your thoughts…
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rmz
October 16, 2013
Althoug the movie touched my heart & soul, i had a totally different perspective of Ilas thought process. I was under the assumption that she will stay with her young husband and will not fall for an older men after seeing the tragic lifestyles of aunty’s husband & her father who are both bedridden, then Sajjan claims hes old man. ….
For everyone thinking wat hell i am writing, this is what i perceived with the flow of emotions & underdtanding.
Well everyhuman being has his own thought process and i was relating the story so much to myself, for few of the incidents
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JK
December 15, 2013
Rangan,
Have you seen the movie ONNU MUTHAL POOJYAM VERE (From One to Zero) 1986 Malayalam.?
If not, do watch and let me know what you think of it?
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Noor
March 17, 2014
I may be among the few who liked the Bhutan angle. It showed just how complex Ila is as a person. She does not give up her jewelry, climb the stairs and jump off a roof with her daughter. She sells the symbols, packs her bags and aims for Bhutan. Thank you, Ritesh Batra for creating Ila, and bravo Nimrat Kaur, for playing her so subtly and beautifully.
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jerry paul carroll
August 1, 2015
OK folks, tell me if you disagree… my friends saw a version which had a sad ending, I saw a version which continued and had a happy ending because Mr. Fernandes returns, the kids playing ball said they thought he had gone forever and he said “I’m back”, and he got the men who delivered the lunches to take him with them to ILa’s house and you know that he is going to find her and her daughter in the street by running and looking for them after finding that he missed them at ILa’s house like in the Graduate when Dustin Hoffmann is too late to stop the wedding. Happy Ending!
So has the day come when you have to buy every version of a movie to see the happy ending? For instance, In 50 Shades of Grey the theatrical version has a sad ending as Dakota Johnson tells the Christian Grey crazy man to get lost, but, the unrated version has him so unhappy when she sends him a package, probably his red car’s keys, and says something like ‘remembering better times’. And the extended scenes show her unhappy also,but daydreaming about the good times, so you can see that a happy ending is on the way because both are unhappy. So you decide that the happy ending, and this is a complement to the movie that you would even care, must be that Dakota decides to find the mystery woman we thought we would meet but never did, and she follows the clues back to where Grey lived when the older woman spanked him and made him a weirdo and you figure it is someone like Katie Couric, and Dakota gets a job working for her and watches her demeanor and Katie has a date with Christian but by then Dakota has managed by demeanor, statements, and innuendo to find out what Christian’s desires were when Katie paddled his behind, Dakota hires two wrestlers like Randy Savage and Jesse Ventura to grab Katie and take her for a trip to Miami Beach and turn her loose apologizing that they snatched the wrong woman but by then, Dakota, in a mask and altered voice, has whipped Grey into shape using Katie’s technique. Eventually Grey finds out he is now the beatee and Dakota is the beator so they live happily ever after with Dakota having to buy him a cushioned toilet seat for Christmas so he can sit. In the unrated version the extended ending, as in The Lunchbox extended ending, lets you know that the happy ending you always wanted is coming, you just have to work for it. JAY BYRD CARROLL>
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brangan
October 16, 2015
Interesting piece on the film that I found from the reference my review:
http://globalfilmstudies.com/2014/04/23/the-lunchbox-indiagermanyfranceus-2013/
“The real danger is that Western critics will leap on the film as an example of the ‘real India’ – or the ‘real Indian cinema’ without the nuanced perspective the film requires.”
One could write reams about this…
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ramitbajaj01
October 16, 2015
Sir, but I guess that you would disagree with that reviewer for that particular line, as you generally believe that a film or the director can’t be burdened with how the audience receives the film, and that if the audience is ‘generalizing’ their perceptions based on the film then it’s their fault and not the film-maker’s?
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tonks
October 16, 2015
And how has the film been received? The best review of the film I’ve found is from the Indian critic Baradwaj Rangan. I read this review after I’d written the comments above and I agree with it 100%, especially the praise for Siddiqui and the analysis of the open-ended narrative. Most of the other reviews aim for a relatively simple acceptance of the pleasures of what is indeed a well-made film with quality performances
Well, no surprises there for us 🙂
This is an Indian cultural product which ‘reads’ in some ways (primarily its cinematography and editing) like an American Independent or an international festival film.
I suppose what he means is the same as this: “and it’s not just in the way he shoots, with long takes, without much cutting, leaving the actors free to enter and exit the frames.”
The review given in the link seems to be written by a non-Indian which makes its grasp all the more outstanding. Guess much less is lost in translation than you would think, for the discerning viewer.
And finally, since Iswarya seems otherwise engaged, may I point out a typo :
Interesting piece on the film that I found from the reference to my review:
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Iswarya
October 17, 2015
Ah, I keep my hands off comments. I don’t want to become any more paranoid than I already am. The reviews/posts I sort-of pick on, maybe because they are quite carefully composed and often have a print version too. Comments, though, get a free pass 🙂
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Aman Basha
April 29, 2020
RIP Irrfan Khan
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sam
May 9, 2020
This was a very good review Mr Bharadwaj Rangan
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