The Lunchbox
(India/France/USA/ Germany, 104 min.)
Written and directed by Ritesh Batra
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur,
Nawazuddin Siddiqui
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| Irrfan Khan as Saajan. Photo by Michael Simmonds, courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. |
I want seconds of The
Lunchbox! This feature debut by writer/director Ritesh Batra is a savoury
film. The indelible Lunchbox offers an exotic dish for audiences, too, for the
deceptively simple love story is delivered by the intricate system of Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs,
which are a group of deliverymen who shuttle lunchboxes (dabbas) around the
city in a complex network that brings piping-hot home-cooked meals into offices
around the city. It’s a complicated system as The Lunchbox shows through the
dizzying array of trains, cars, bicycles, and rickshaws that traverse the
densely populated city. However, a Harvard study suggests that the Dabbawallahs
have such an accurate system that the likelihood of a wife’s culinary efforts
filling the tummy of the wrong husband is as unlikely as the odds of one in a
million. There is still that one lunchbox out of every million that may go to
the wrong man, though, and Mumbai is a city of over 12 million people, so there
are stories to be told behind those few wayward deliveries that defy the
system.
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| Nimrat Kaur as Ila. Photo by Michael Simmonds, courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. |
If the route to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then
Ila’s dish is a triumph. The secret ingredient, however, is the stroke of luck
that delivers the dabba to the wrong man. The lunch meant for Rajeev, that one
lunch in a million that goes to the wrong luncher, lands on the desk of Mr.
Saajan Fernandes (played with commendable humility and vulnerability by Life of
Pi’s Irrfan Khan), a widower and claims investigator working the final days of
his tedious job in a stuffy Mumbai office. Ila’s lunch makes every day of his
final month worth the daily rat race, though, for her gratitude at his
appreciation for her cooking inspires her to pour her soul into each meal that
fills the dabba. The meals warm the heart as much as they satisfy the belly.
The Lunchbox offers the most satisfying creation of food on
film since that delectable prawn scene with Tilda Swinton made moviegoers’
tongues quiver in I am Love. The dishes of The Lunchbox are simpler and less
sensuous than the gourmet grub of Love, but there’s a stirring poetry to the
pleasure of its home-style cooking. What makes The Lunchbox such a lovely film
is not so much the dishes themselves, but the pleasure one gets in sharing a
meal. Eating is, after all, a communal event just as much as it is an act of
refueling one’s body. Batra unites Ila and Saajan beautifully in their
crosscut scenes as one character prepares the meal and the other enjoys it. One
feels the same comforting warmth watching the movie that one gets while sipping
a cup of soup.
Moreover, The Lunchbox playfully adds a mealtime
conversation to their lunch dates, for Ila slips a kind ‘thank you’ note into
the second dish she sends Saajan’s way. He replies with a modest, “The food was
salty today,” but the developing courtship of the two makes The Lunchbox is
sweet—an utterly believable—love story. Batra also gives Ila and Saajan an
implied union through the subtle framing of their epistolary lunch dates. Each
party sits at the opposite side of the table in their respective reading, so The
Lunchbox works as a dialogue of shot/reverse shots that conjoin the two through
the act of sharing a meal.
The indirect presence of one party in the other’s story also
grants the lunches a whiff of infidelity. Sending a letter a meal to a
different man isn’t adultery per se, but the editing by John Lyons, the
direction by Batra, and the excellent performances by Kaur and Khan give the
conversations a hesitancy and a sense of reservation, thus implying the grey
area into which the lunches stray as Ila falls in love again by feeding Saajan
since her husband is never home to share her cooking nor her company. They’re
exploring what it feels like to fall in love again and as their buds slowly
taste forgotten flavours.
The motif of the community and the conviviality of sharing a
meal develops as The Lunchbox progresses, for Saajan is gradually joined at the
lunch-table by his new replacement, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Shaikh is an
annoying keener when his tenure his Saajan begins, but Batra introduces food
to show the gaps in Shaikh’s own life and the effort he makes to better his
situation. Some people, Saajan notes in a letter to Ila, cannot afford more to
eat more than a banana a meal since they’re cheap and they fill you up. The
first day at lunch, to no surprise, Shaikh pulls out a banana while Saajan
devours another scrumptious meal from Ila’s kitchen. The reserved Saajan opens
up to Shaikh, though, and passes some naan across the table and invites Shaikh
to help himself. A barrier is broken by breaking bread, and the same spark that
Ila finds in the kitchen ignites a friendship between the two colleagues as
Shaikh becomes more endearing with each meal.
Shaikh also introduces a valuable piece of proverbial wisdom
that becomes the underlying mantra of the film. One day, when Shaikh invites
Saajan back for dinner, he explains on the long ride home that his poverty
often leaves him hopping trains without a ticket and hoping that he won’t be
caught as he moves from place to place. “Sometimes the wrong train brings you
to the right station,” he says. The line arises when Saajan feels a different
kind of hunger each time the lunchbox appears on his desk. Saajan, however,
also learns of the sizable age gap between himself and Ila as their letters
become more intimate and revealing.
The trains, on the other hand, provide another visual element
of the film to complement Batra's play with food. The complicated network of
transit in the city—noted in the sprawling trains and the hustle-bustle of Dabbawallahs—shows
the endless myriad of possibilities that await a hungry/lovelorn traveller. Batra packs every frame of The Lunchbox with metaphors, and the vibrancy of the city,
the sensational pleasures of the food, and the hunger that invades every space
of the frame makes The Lunchbox a film for any palette.
Batra makes a commendable feature debut with The Lunchbox
by furthering the intimacy of comfort foods he developed in his lovely short Café
Regular, Cairo. The Lunchbox, like Café Regular, is stirring in its
simplicity; however, Batra brings the film to an unexpected destination as The
Lunchbox boards the trains of Mumbai and tests Shaikh’s theory about trains and
stations. The Lunchbox leaves it open to viewers where Ila and Saajan might be
going. The Lunchbox, a near-perfect film, will surely leave audiences hoping
that Ila and Saajan get a second course.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The Lunchbox is currently screening in theatres from Mongrel
Media.
It screens in Toronto at the Cineplex Varsity and Varsity VIP cinemas
and it screens in Ottawa at The Mayfair
from April 25 and returns to The ByTowne on May 22 and June 22-24.
