Together the two deal with their problems and find solace. When Ila (Nimrat Kaur) sends her food to her husband it is misdirected and sent to Saajan and the two start sending each other letters as they struggle with their own problems such as life after work and a distant husband. The film follows Saajan (Irrfan Khan), a man who is on the verge of retirement but when he is one day given a lunch box containing food meant for someone else it starts a relationship he never thought he would have. What I found however is stories like this carry across oceans and continents as love and friendship are at their core very human feelings and they all transfer with The Lunchbox being a testament to that fact. It’s hard to dispel the notion that parts of foreign cinema will be confusing and undecipherable to some, it’s even harder to dispel those ideas in your own head and with The Lunchbox I went in expecting a film that would have a different idea of the modern romance thanks to its foreign setting. In that regard the film is about hope and how even the most routine existence can be transformed by a hope for something better.
The exchange of notes enlivens both Saajan and Ila because they both realise that another life is possible. We feel the relief when he gets home in the evening and simply stands on his balcony alone, having a smoke.
The office where Saajan works is large and people work side by side. The setting is contemporary India and it is realistically conveyed with lots of people thronging the streets and crowding the trains. The film has a slightly melancholy mood as the leading man is a widower, quite old and about to retire, whereas the woman is much younger, with a husband who neglects her and a young daughter who is at school most of the time. The contact develops as they exchange notes, even though it is a relationship of words only, since they do not see each other. This is a gentle, humane story about two lonely people who accidentally make contact through a note inside a lunch-box. Genres: Bollywood, Comedy, Drama, Romance Countries: India Actors: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Lillete Dubey, Nakul Vaid, Bharti Achrekar, Yashvi Puneet Nagar, Denzil Smith, Shruti Bapna, Nasir Khan, Lokesh Raj, Sadashiv Kondaji Pokarkar, Aarti Rathod, Krishna Bai, Raj Rishi More, Santosh Kumar Chaurasiya, Swapnil Shirirao, Avijit Khanwilkar, Aakash Sinha, Xavier Hodges Directors: Ritesh Batra Producers: Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga, Arun Rangachari Writers: Ritesh Batra, Vasan Bala Aka: Dabba Studio: Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd. When he fails to respond to her efforts, Ila decides to enclose a note in the next meal and Saajan, his taste-buds tickled and his interest piqued, decides to write back. The lunchbox had been intended for young housewife Ila's emotionally indifferent husband in an attempt to win back his favour. Scott, The New York Times).When Saajan (Irrfan Khan), an ill-tempered Mumbai office worker nearing retirement, is delivered the wrong lunch he is pleasantly surprised by the improvement in his food. “ style is more Hollywood than Bollywood, and Old Hollywood at that.The comedy is more wry than uproarious, the melodrama gently poignant rather than operatic, and the sentimentality just sweet enough to be satisfying rather than bothersome” (A.O. The cast is marvelous, especially the late, great Bollywood star Khan who left us too soon in 2020. An involving variation on the Shop Around the Corner formula, The Lunchbox was an arthouse smash in the U.S.
THE LUNCHBOX 2013 ENGLISH SUBTITLES FREE
Outside the space of their daily lives, both Ila and Saajan feel free to express themselves in new ways, leading them both to question how they might find happiness. After Ila realizes that Saajan is receiving the meals meant for her husband, the two begin sending each other letters through the lunchbox. Saajan (Khan) is a beaten down widower about to retire from his number-crunching job. Ila (Kaur) is a housewife living in a middle-class neighbourhood with a husband who ignores her. In Mumbai, home to over 18 million people, more than 5,000 famously efficient dabbawallas-lunchbox couriers-navigate chaotic streets to deliver lunches, lovingly prepared by housewives, to working men across the city.