Movie review: The Lunchbox

Can you fall in love with someone you have never met? – this is the question that pulled me into the movie theatre to watch The Lunchbox. But I soon realised how the question did not matter in the movie. The movie was not about falling in love despite the blind distance. It was about companionship, about finding someone you can talk to without thinking, about having someone you can share your deepest thoughts that come to you when you talk to them. In the middle of the movie somewhere, Irrfan Khan, aka Saajan Fernandes, says “We forget things if we have no one to tell them to”. What is happiness, if you have no one to share it with? You can be rich and successful all you want, but there would still be a void in your heart if you cannot share it with someone, someone who cares, someone you care for. Someone who gets you.

“Sometimes wrong train takes you to the right destination” another one of my favourite lines from the movie. You never know how an instance can change your life, and the lens from which you view it. In that instance, when you stepped into the wrong train, an anomaly in your ‘regular’ life, you couldn’t have imagined which station you’d be getting down at. And when you do get down, it’s a new world. All you need to do is embrace it. Fearlessly.

I really liked the light humour in the movie, the situational one-liners which were funny on the surface, but ironic if you linger on them a little longer. My favourite character in the movie was not Irrfan Khan or Nimrat Kaur, it was Nawazuddin Siddiqui. He had a separate story going on in the movie, but it gave a buoyant force to the main plot. The movie would have been bland without him. He brought an authentic flavour to the movie with his honest expression. He was real. And raw. There was nothing put-on about the characters, including Mrs. Deshpande. She was an interesting character. I saw this 'concept' on Indian screen for the first time. It is one of those characters who you never 'see' in the movie, only hear. Like the legs of the master in Tom and Jerry, you never get to see their face. Other example that comes to my mind is Howard's mother from The Big Bang Theory.

I don’t want to fill this review with spoilers, so I am not going to talk about scenes and the story. *sigh* I have so much to say about this movie- the characters, the setting, the dialogues, the metaphors. . .

I am not your usual movie buff who catches movies first day first show (I usually wait before I can download a good dvd version), but somehow the trailer of this movie had caught my attention by horns, and I was waiting for the movie to be released in India. This is the first movie I had gone to watch alone. And I had a good time. The weather also was on my side. A short walk back home in the light rain, was just what I wanted- if I choose to forget the muddy pools and the traffic.

Wrapping up, I must urge you to watch The Lunchbox. It is simple storytelling, the raw sentiments and characters that will pull you right into the movie.

P.S: After watching the movie, I realized how important the skill of cooking is for a woman. Way to a person’s heart is really through their stomach. Everyone raves about ‘ma ke haath ka khana’; sometimes I wonder if my kids will ever be able to say that. The era of ‘ma ke haath ka khana’ is slowly vanishing. And I feel bad about that. The Lunchbox re-instilled my motivation to learn cooking. At it!