A Beautiful Short Story
The
Lunchbox is that rare and special pleasure: a movie that invites us to sit
back and let it wash gently over us. Writer/Director Ritesh Batra has written a
beautiful short story on film, a touching picture of the vulnerability of his
characters.
Batra opens
his story with a mother who delivers life lessons to her young daughter as she
readies her for school. Ila ((Nimrat Kaur), a classically beautiful woman living
in a dead marriage with Rajeev (Nakul Vaid), returns to her kitchen to prepare
Rajeev’s lunchbox while talking out the window to Auntie (Bharati Achrekar) who
lives in the upstairs flat. Auntie sends down advice and ingredients in a basket
lowered by rope. The advice? Delicious hot lunches will invigorate the marriage;
here are the ingredients.
A word about
that. We are in Mumbai and the city is famous for its lunchbox delivery system
of daily hot meals prepared by wives or restaurants for working men. As we
follow Ila’s lunchbox we watch a relay race of delivery men who hand it off –
along with dozens of other lunchboxes –to a succession of messengers who never
make a mistake. Until today.
It has taken
me two full paragraphs to do what director Batra does in his fast flash opening
scenes; he introduces us to his major players, gives us the crush of Mumbai’s
commuter culture in the pouring rain, and shows us the mechanics of the flawless
lunchbox system. On this day, Ila’s perfect hot lunch lands not on the desk of
her husband but in front of Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan) who eats it, cleans
the stacked cups, and encloses a polite note to Ila explaining the mistake.
And so we
have met Saajan, a glum, silent widower, Ila, a depressed, lonely wife, Auntie
who tends a husband who has been in a coma for fifteen years, Ila’s mother whose
husband is dying, and finally and wonderfully, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddigui), the
lonely young man with no family who is about to replace Saajan when he retires
after 35 years at the same desk in the claims department. Every one of them is
alone, and The Lunchbox touches lightly on each while concentrating on the
exchange of daily notes between Ila and Saajan as they warm to possibility.
Director
Batra resists easy solutions, giving us instead a gentle unfolding that is
entirely consistent with his characters. Irrfan Khan never abandons subtlety as
he moves from Saajan’s depression to emotional risk. Nimrat Kaur, more open
about Ila’s sadness, gives all of it to us through delicate expression.
Overstatement would have ruined the tone, and there is none.
The unspoken
question here: what might these people be willing to do to change their
aloneness? At one point, Saajan says, “I think we forget things if we have no
one to tell them to.” That captures the feelings of everyone we have met in this
low key, very lovely movie.
Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film title : The Lunchbox
Distributor : Sony Pictures Classics
Word Count : 496
Running Time : 1:44
Rating : PG
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