There is a scene in The Lunchbox in which the protagonist peers at a display of apparently identical paintings only to realize that each painting is minutely different: the building and road is the same, but the people are always different. He even recognizes himself in one of the paintings, or thinks he does, and purchases it and hugs it to his chest during the commute home.The Lunchbox is like one of those paintings. Mumbai is always the same: flawed, crowded, and beautiful; but the people are different, and nearly every Indian watching The Lunchbox will recognize themselves in a scene, a line of dialogue, or a character. The Lunchbox is about middle-class India, the largest class in India, and yet the most underrepresented people in cinema. The West likes stories about the poor; Bollywood likes stories about the rich and beautiful.But The Lunchbox isn't a typical film, not for Hollywood, and certainly not for Bollywood. It has a certain old-world charm that makes its romance delicate, hopeful and wonderfully intimate. It's an epistolary film about the burgeoning romance between Saajan (Irrfan Khan), a soon-to-retire corporate employee, and Ila (Nimrat Kaur), a young housewife with an indifferent husband. There's also Saajan's coworker Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who is eager to please, unintentionally funny, and desperate to become part of the middle class.It's utterly refreshing to watch director Ritesh Batra transcend cliche over and over again. Both Saajan and Shaikh are from minority communities, but they look and behave like everybody else, just as it is in real life. The odd little romance between Saajan and Ila is carried out through letters as they exchange extraordinarily intimate thoughts that they would never have been able to tell anyone in their lives. The actors are wonderfully restrained, speaking in quick jargon instead of in the measured, calculated tones heard in other Bollywood movies.Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui are often unfairly compared, as another reviewer pointed out, but aside from the fact that they don't usually act in mainstream Bollywood fare, there are very few similarities between the two, and The Lunchbox once again illustrates their differences. Irrfan Khan has perfected a certain persona: the monk among the crazies. He is always calm, quiet, and mildly bemused by everyone around him, the eternal outsider. He always brings across a quality of calm complacence, and pulls it off with a slightly new twist in each film.Nawazuddin Siddiqui, on the other hand, is a blank slate, almost unrecognizable in each film. He doesn't quite seem like a real person; he cannot be pinned down or explained. His role in The Lunchbox is refreshingly light and only hints at his vast range. It's marvelous, then, that Nimrat Kaur manages to not only equal the two actors, but to infuse her character with so much unsaid emotion despite the fact that she is usually acting alone, unlike the other two.The Lunchbox is a beautifully restrained film with only a few flaws. It fails to address several important issues in the characters' lives, and although its runtime is short by Bollywood standards, it could have been further strengthened by tightening the film by about twenty minutes. These flaws seem minute, however, when I recall all the things that the film accomplished so wonderfully.I watched The Lunchbox with my parents. My father lived in Mumbai for several years, and it's the only place in the world he considers home. He was besieged by memories of the city: the food, the air, the people, the trains. And my mother drew in her breath when Ila's mother says, "If I had a son, I wouldn't need to ask anybody for money." That's just how the film is: it draws from a collective memory of middle-class consciousness and in the process creates a bittersweet love story that always rings true.
