The story of this film is a no-brainer. Someone’s lunch box gets delivered to someone else and
eventually sets off a love story, of two
people who never met. Exchanging notes simply seems like technology that pre-dated
stories of chat room friends eventually in love like ‘You’ve got mail’ which came
at the turn of the century. But the simplicity
in its storytelling makes it effective
and worthwhile.
Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a housewife
juggling tasks, like preparing her kid for school, cooking up lunch for her
husband before the dabbawala arrives and chatting
up with an old lady in the neighborhood who share stuff over a basket that
is passed on between their homes. On the other hand is a widower Saajan Fernandez (Irrfan Khan), who works in an insurance
company and is on the verge of retirement. After a good day at office, his only
pastime is to smoke cigarettes in the balcony of his old Bandra home.
Irrfan Khan is a phenomenally
talented actor and he delivers yet
another gem. However, despite all the make-up he looks too young to
convincingly play a guy approaching sixty. Nawazuddin
Siddiqui does a great job in a supporting role, delivering the witty lines
with precision. Nimrat Kaur, who can
be seen in the recent Dairy Milk Silk Commercial, seems like an apt choice for the role she played.
There are elements of lazy writing that the writer-director Ritesh
Batra has chosen when one of the lead characters is looking for an outlet to convey her thoughts to the
audience. Ila then communicates with a neighborhood Aunty (Bharati Acherekar)
who is never seen on screen. Both
these ladies seem to discuss everything that happens with each other the whole
day. After a while, when you hear Nimrat Kaur’s character say ‘aunty’ for the
umpteenth time, you would burst into
laughter.
Although the film, at times, seems
slow-moving, one must give it a benefit of doubt because it wouldn’t have
been possible to display loneliness
and to use quiet to portray disquiet
in the characters’ lives, each of whom has lost his soul running the hamster’s wheel in Mumbai. Had its pace been any
faster, the film would have lost all charm and would have been a soulless 45
minute film instead.
Its essence is mostly that of a short
story told on the big screen. It brings forth questions such as: Would you
fall in love with someone you never met? And also breaking the barriers of age
and how the society would look at it. Or rather, is love a mere form of escape from stark realities, such as that of a bored housewife and an aged widower who
both have issues as to how life turned about to be for them?
Verdict: If you are the
kinds who likes movies made about common
folk, tales of love and hope amidst the loneliness drowned by the din of the city that never sleeps, this
movie is for you. Nonetheless, don’t expect the film to be a perfect ten on the
scoreboard either. ‘The Lunchbox’ is
worth watching.
Rating 7/10: Simple story,
elegantly told
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