This is a review of The Lunchbox (Dabba) (2013)
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8 May
This is a review of The Lunchbox (Dabba) (2013)
A beautiful film about the things that we say, and transport of all kinds (e.g. by train, emotionally, and to convey), The Lunchbox > (Dabba) (2013) is prudently packed with metaphors, none of which are leant on, but which give great richness.
It is rightly said that Irrfan Khan (Saajan Fernandes) excels in this film, which he does by pacing, by small facial gestures, and by his sheer humanity, but so does Nimrat Kaur as Ila, with the central group of characters completed by Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Shaikh) and Yashvi Puneet Nagar (Yashvi). Other characters, we either never see (Auntie, played by Bharati Achrekar), or might as well not have (Nakul Vaid’s Rajeev) : Auntie, though invisible, proves more kindred than some.
Contrary to @THEAGENTAPSLEY's expectations, a beautiful film, not a schmaltzy one, in The Lunchbox (Dabba) (2013) - many elements / facets !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2014
The film, set in Mumbai, revolves around trains, but without ever being about them, except as passing social commentary on the Westernizing influence of, amongst various matters, commuting. It starts and ends with a train, pleasantly leaving us in the dark, right in the beginning, as to what we see, but later letting us sometimes be one step ahead of the game. The central medium of the lunchbox, carried far and wide, bears many an import : as blind Cupid, the happenstance that other modern styles of media (such as Twitter®) can give rise to*, as a barometer of the feelings and of interest and appreciation (Twitter® again, with fire-fights, or e-mail (also mentioned, but unseen)), and of what sharing is, whether of food with another (we see some highly contrasting contrasting meals) or via the delivery service.
Sending something of oneself to another place, and what life is and concerns itself best with, these are the matters that The Lunchbox devotes itself to**. Unafraid to look matters such as stagnation, ageing, death, suicide and the content of a lifespan in the face, the film sets them in relief against the revolutionizing potential for good in (being open to) change. Hopes and fears, encouraged or allayed by Auntie at first, transmute into the aspiration for a place elsewhere, which could be Bhutan, which is not shown (but maybe familiar from Michael Palin’s excellent series Himalaya).
En route, the façades that, if we are honest with ourselves, we all should know that we put up of withdrawing into our nutshell and becoming ‘the king of infinite space’ (Hamlet), or, equally, of embracing some new way without heed to its impact on ourselves and / or on others – taking a lover, ‘exploiting’ an opportunity, closing our heart. Clinging on to what we find that we have really been resenting or needlessly protecting is exemplified by the realization made by Ila’s mother, or by the little girl who shuts Fernandes out from what he can see (symbolically, too), whereas his sense of something good, right and different is palpable when we see him open the lunchbox, almost as if the aroma came to us alongside how fine the food looks.
Yes, it is partly what some like to call magical realism, with the delivery system that has been endorsed by Harvard Business School as the engine for change with a life of its own (despite the customer-service response from the local representative’s denials), but this is not the hackneyed topos of the mystique and draw of India that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) depicts.
Instead, writer / director Ritesh Batra has fully absorbed the examples given by works such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude or Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Lottery in Babylon’, and there is a seamless integration of medium and polymath message. Neither a rough ride, nor striving just to feel good, this film even gives us little flavours of themes such as those of The Double (2013) (in the government offices, devoid of technology, and of people seeking to get / hang on), and maybe even The Matrix (1999), in looking beyond the life that we take for life…
With camera-angles to wallow in and a controlled use of light, not to mention an insightful triptych mirror-scene, the film is as wonderfully put together as it is acted. Max Richter, in at the start with his score, is on very good form, and the result of this endeavour is a film that is moving and intelligent : it does not just entertain, but with the pretence of a big message of Small is beautiful (You’ve Got Mail (1998)), or needlessly and provocatively revel in the epistolary power to corrupt (in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation for Dangerous Liaisons (1988)), but engages with the questions that we may avoid even acknowledging as twentieth-century citizens.
End-notes
* Though the Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet, more than 400 years ago and to name but two, both manage very well in rely on the potential for, respectively, fortuitous and calamitous (mis)communication…
** And it may not just be coincidence, for what it is worth, that Khan is part of Slumdog Millionaire (2008).
*** Almost racist in its suggestion of the primitivism of different ways, just as the very flawed Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) feels to be in its transplanted setting of the Catalonian capital for the original one of Los Angeles.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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