If you are unfamiliar with how the Mumbai Dabba system works, you’ll have a lot of questions on your mind within 15 minutes of the movie’s start. But that shouldn’t deter you from’The Lunchbox’ since you’ll likely have bigger questions to think about as the movie progresses.
The story is typical of millions of lives in metros like Mumbai where husbands dont have time for their wives; men spend their lifetime in drab jobs with no personal lives to fall back to and where there are scores of irritating upstarts ready to displace you at the drop of a hat. Fernandez(Irrfan) is an introvert widower serving a state run insurance company. He is about to retire while Sheikh(Nawaz) has been put in as his apprentice to eventually replace him. Ila(Nimrat Kaur) is a lonely housewife who meticulously cooks for her ’unappreciative’ husband and sends it to him in a Lunchbox delivered by your Mumbai Dabbawala. Her lunchbox starts getting swapped and delivered to Fernandez due to error at Dabbawala’s end. The two begin exchanging notes(quite literally) and soon develop a platonic relationship. Being unhappy with their lives and unsure of the future, they often share their plans of "breaking out" of their mundane lifestyles and going to Bhutan, understandably just an allegory for "falling out" of the rat race for things more meaningful.
The script is really well worked upon and it shows. Not only are the dialogues well’spaced out’, but are replete with intelligent humor, if at all wry in most cases. Whether its Irrfan initial indifference to Nawaz’s efforts to break the ice with him or their exchanges at the lunch table or Lillette(playing Nimrat’s mother) "relenting" to take monetary help from her daughter, there is a lot of clever "characterisation" happening and a lot of attention to details too. Please do not go for the movie if you like to hear blabbering all the time. If you do, this might be excruciatingly’slow’.
I could sense a strong undercurrent of rivalry between Irrfan and Nawaz during their scenes together. Almost reminiscent of Yusufsaab and AB slugging it out in Shakti. Irrfan starts out a bit sluggishly but as the movie progresses he comes into his own. He also has a larger role to play. Nawaz to my mind marginally wins the battle here, since his accent and’conduct’ are typical of the character he seeks to portray - that of a "self-made" man who has worked his way up to where he is. Very natural but every bit as rough cut and unpolished as self-made young men usually go. Its as if he is knocking on the doors of greatness and wont be kept waiting for long.
Nimrat Kaur, that good-looker from Cadbury Silk ad, immediately makes an impression. In an era where she could easily land herself Deepika-Anoushka-Katrina-Kareena like’commercial’ roles, its great to see her choose to make her Bollywood debut opposite heavyweights like Irrfan and Nawaz. Thankfully she hardly has a scene or two opposite these guys so the question of getting’overwhelmed’ doesnt arise. But even then she has more than held her own against the biggies and looked every bit a lonely mother-of-8-year-old for whom personal grooming and upkeep has fallen out of the list of priorities.
To its credit the story manages to build up a little suspense as to "what will the climax be?". Not that the viewer expects something drastic to happen, mind you. But the interest seems to stem from the fact that the characters of both Irrfan and Nimrat are so close to real life characters and "their" story so easy to identify with that the viewer is eager to discover the climax with the’hope’ that he might find something of a’solution’ for himself and others around him. The climax however, is a bit’open-ended’ as is often the wont with such stories.
The other noteworthy thing about the movie is that lots of people/organisations seem to have come together for the movie, including UTV, Dharma Productions, Anurag Kashyap, DAR Motion(German) and NFDC. The only peeve I had in the movie was the "holier-than-thou" "tambaku chhodo" ads thrust in by the regulators which serve as a painful reminder of how our Govt. runs on the very tobacco and liquor it ostensibly drives us to quit.
To sign off, the LunchBox is a very well made movie. The topic is contemporary. The handful of cast have turned in great performances. The story is’real’ and so is its portrayal. Its the kind of movie where you will likely find beauty in "oily walls of the kitchen", "the dingy marbles lining the bathroom" or that "old iron gate that creaks from rust".
I dont usually recommend "must watches" but in this case I’ll happily make an exception.