One Line Review: “A co-incidental subtle romance which has a soul of itself”!
The LunchBox YouTube Trailer
Starring: Irrfan Khan (Late) as Saajan Fernandes, Nimrat Kaur as Ila, Nawazuddin Siddique as Shaikh, Bharati Achrekar as Mrs. Deshpande
Directed By: Rajesh Batra
Release Date: 20 September, 2013
What’s it About?
The Lunchbox is a light romantic movie directed by Ritesh Batra starring Irrfan Khan (Late) and Nimrat Kaur. It’s one of the brilliant films by Irrfan Khan and the debut film of Nimrat Kaur.
“Irrfan leads the way, underplayed, yet lasting, like a cardamom between your lips”
~ Times of India
In a few short words: The Lunchbox is: “A perfect example of how two people can fall in love with each other without even seeing each other”!
My very own ratings for The Lunchbox will be a high 9/10!
Plot/Story Line
The Lunchbox starts with the journey of a “lunchbox” traveling from the kitchen, to the locals, to the person who eats it. But there is a slight twist in this movie, Ila (played by Nimrat Kaur) who prepares a lunchbox for her husband “Rajeev”, mistakenly gets delivered to Saajan Fernandes (played by Khan).
Khan plays the role of the typical government employee. He is standoffish, reserved, and maturely quiet. He sees the world through his glasses placed on the nose which require him to slightly bend his neck.
Whereas Ila is portrayed as a typical Bombay housewife. She is simple, believes in “Dil ka raasta pet se guzarta hai” (In order to impress someone, you need to feed them good food). And there comes Shaikh (played by Nawazuddin) who is the substitution of Fernandes when he is retiring; speaks absolute rubbish all the time, is over-friendly, full of lies, and overly active.
The Mumbai ka dabbawalas (LunchBox delivery guys) misdelivers Ila’s lunchbox to Fernandes (which is unusual given they are six sigma and all). She finds the Dabba (Lunchbox) empty and asks Rajeev if he liked the lunch, to which he says, “Aloo gobhi accha bani thi” (Cauliflower Vegetable was good) when in reality she had made something else.
Ila and Aunty (Mrs. Deshpande) are close neighbors, aunty, who never actually comes in the frame, but like any other neighbor especially in Bombay, they share vegetables through a basket and tips for cooking.
Ila then pens a little letter and keeps the letter in the Dabba (LunchBox) and gives it away. Fernandes reads it and gives a reply back. And that is how their unusual and unlikely romance starts.
Screenplay
The screenplay by Batra and Rutwik Oza give us a major glimpse of “Mumbai ka traffic”, the rapid velocity of the locals, the children singing songs in their own scale inside the locals.
The feeling of watching the exchange of letters might be the same as how we would write letters to our crushes in our childhood. But it is not! Batra has very maturely portrayed the communication and the feeling is weirdly the same but different at the same time!
Ila like any other wife to her husband cooks her husband’s favorite food and expects that would improve communication between them, sadly it never turns out like that.
Romance oozes from the moments when Fernandes waits for the lunch-break and is excited to read what Ila has written to him! There is a scene where he writes to Ila, that he got a painting for himself which he thought resembled himself.
The message here is so deep that he has been going to the same roads for the past 37 years and he couldn’t even realize that. It is because he never sat down and paid attention to his emotions. It is almost like, surviving life and not really living it!
The movie beautifully portrays how Ila and Fernandes find warmth and comfort in sharing their thoughts and emotions with each other.
What’s to Like?
The scene which stood out from the whole movie for me is, when the kids are singing the song “Pardesi jana nahin” and how the same song is playing in Ila’s house.
Batra has brilliantly showcased Ila and Fernandes living in a parallel universe and going through the same emotions!
In the chaos of the Mumbai traffic horns and the necessity of catching the local train, melancholy hides deep within. Lunchbox shows it brilliantly.
The way Aunty and Ila communicate is something we all experience every day and it still looks amazing on-screen. The cinematography is on point and intriguing.
Dialogues like “We forget things if we have nobody to tell them to” make us think deeply about life!
“We forget things if we have nobody to tell them to”
Saajan Fernandes (late Irrfan Khan). The LucnhBox
Finally
It is a film which Bollywood didn’t make for ages but something like this was definitely needed. “The Lunchbox” is introspective, deep and something which we all can connect to. The movie is simple and authentic and has its own taste! A feel-good movie.
It is not necessarily a romance but a beautiful relation of warmth and comfort. It surely is one of the gems by Khan which will be regretted if not watched yet!
Take a break from life and watch The Lunchbox!
