Movie: The Lunchbox
Director: Ritesh Batra
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Rating: ****
Spoilers ahead!
I insist you watch “The Lunchbox” on an empty stomach. By the time you walk out of the film, your tummy will not growl for food but love that gets beautifully woven in the film in the most unexpected manner. Two lonely souls, Ila (Nimrat) and Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan) build an unlikely relationship when a lunch box prepared by the former for her husband gets wrongly delivered to the latter by the Mumbai dabbawallas.
We are so used to believing that love can only happen when two people meet, but “The Lunchbox” proves us all wrong. It narrates one of the poignant love stories on screen backed by flawless performances. It breaks all the common Bollywood clichés about love, including some of our own, only to make us fall in love with film and its characters.
I simply loved the characters of the film. Be it Ila, a caring housewife yearning for love or Deshpande aunty, who stays above Ila’s house and involves herself in some of the funniest conversations; Saajan, a widower nearing superannuation or his soon-to-be replacement Sheikh, played by Nawazuddin.
The entire film relies on simple, crisp and honest one-liners, exchanged between two individuals who have never meet but have started to understand each other as though they have known for years. These one-liners written on a piece of paper make up for wonderful conversation, sometimes even confessions between Ila and Fernandes. In one particular scene, Irrfan explains to a total stranger, who is Ila in this case, about how much he misses his wife while going through the VHS tapes of old television serials, which she used watch over and over again. Saajan finds solace in his conversations with Ila, and therefore, doesn’t even mind sharing his most personal secrets. Ila too feels the same as she continuously talks about how much she is being neglected by her husband.
A separate film could be made on the conversations between Nimrat and Irrfan. There comes a point in the film, I’m sure, when you will feel that it’s not yet love, and at this juncture, you feel it’s some kind of intimacy. I had similar feeling too, but it doesn’t last long because the characters aren’t likely to meet and thus speak their minds. Intimacy may be a strong word as I feel the two in the process of knowing each other enter their suppressed lives thereby filling the chasm within with conversations/confessions.
Batra limits his characters to a minimum of two in a single frame. Mostly revolving around Ila and Saajan, the camera doesn’t allow an extra character to distract us from them. In Ila’s absence, Saajan and Sheikh take the center stage. In essence, the maximum number of characters that we see on screen mostly through the film is two.
There’s lot of silence in the film and music comes in the form the little children singing in the train, dabbawallas crooning in chorus and through the cassette player of Deshpande aunty. Mumbai is an important character along with the middle-class angle that Batra uses to bring his characters little closer. You can feel the middle-class aspiration throughout the film. It’s evident when Irrfan smokes a cigarette every evening wearing the same track pant as he wishfully looks at a Goan family dining or when Ila looks at the world around her through the window of her kitchen or when Sheikh lies about his promotion to his soon-to-be father-in-law, who is ready to give him a scooter as wedding gift. It’s the middle-class air that the film breathes.
Batra lets you keenly observe his characters, from close quarters, to understand their emotions. You know he extracts the best out of his actors when he successfully makes two characters who have never met communicate in synchronous pitch. This is evident when Irrfan impatiently waits for the lunchbox to arrive as he constantly keeps looking at his watch or as Ila awaits its return in the evening. The little expressions Irrfan and Nimrat deliver in these scenes are proof to what Batra is capable of doing and what he did.
Irrfan lets most of his expression to do the dialog delivery as most of his dialogues are single-worded or one-lined. Nimrat Kaur impresses with an unselfconscious effort. She takes up the role of a middle-class housewife with such ease and confidence that makes you wonder if it’s really her screen debut. Needless to say, Nawazuddin as Sheikh can only be loved as much as you love Ila and Saajan.
“The Lunchbox” is a tummylicious meal cooked and served in Indian style. It is sprinkled with an universal seasoning called love. Have you had your full square meal yet?
