“Sometimes, the wrong train will get you to the right station.”  These yearning words of wisdom spoken so matter-of-factly by Ila (Nimrat Kaur – One Night With the King), a lonely yet hopeful housewife in Ritesh Batra’s directorial debut, The Lunchbox, quite simply the best movie through the first eight months of 2014. I am uncertain if this movie will be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award. I hope it will be so that more people will know about it. If it is not, I am not sure I would have ever known about it, let alone see it, if not recommended by my friend David. It further reinforces my appreciation for movie recommendations.

One of my three main reasons for writing this blog is the opportunity to recommend movies to people interested. David said this was the best movie he had seen in 2014. He has excellent tastes in movies,, and we often like the same films,, so, while uncertain about the movie’s premise, I agreed to give it a chance. I’m so glad I did. While I do not think this movie will be my number one rated movie by the end of the year (some GREAT movies are coming out in the next few months), I think it will finish in my Top 10 for 2014. And while I do know that 2014 has been a terrible year for films so far, it does not take away from the fact that The Lunchbox is a fine little film that should be seen by all fans who seek out a subtle and believable story when they choose to escape to the movies.

When most of us last saw Irfan Khan, he was narrating the story of Piscine Militor Pate in 2012’s masterful Life of Pi  (as a quick aside, I believe that the only two movies ever made that need to be viewed in 3D are Life of Pi and Gravity). This time, Khan is in Mumbai, India. He stars as Saajan Fernandes, a terse accounting clerk for a large end insurance company who is on the verge of retirement after 35 years on the job. Hired as his replacement is the eager and upbeat Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). It is Fernandes’s job to train Shaikh before he sets off for his golden years. Shaikh and Fernandes seem to be polar opposites. While Shaikh is so full of energy and life, Fernandes is a worn-down man who has done very little with his life, especially since the passing of his wife. Though it is part of his job, Fernandes has no interest in training Shaikh. He hardly wants the younger man to be around him and, thus, finds every opportunity he can to shoo him away. Meanwhile, Ila is struggling to find purpose in her loveless marriage. Her husband Rajeev (Nakul Vaid) has lost total interest in her. To win her heart through his stomach, Ila prepares these delicious lunches for Rajeev to be delivered to him at work through the city’s dabbawala. The dabbawala transport lunches to people at different locations in the town (it’s kind of like Federal Express meets Dominos Pizza) and then bring the lunch boxes back to their original place later that afternoon.

Perhaps based on these first two paragraphs, you know what happens next. Maybe you do not. I don’t think it spoils anything by saying that Ila’s lunches don’t go to Rajeev. The dabbawala accidentally delivers Ila’s meals to Fernandes. This is the movie’s foundation, and I will leave it at that. I’ve included below the scoring of this movie. I’ve offered a little more if you want to check it out AFTER you watch the movie. If you read it beforehand, it most certainly will spoil things for you.

Plot 9/10
Character Development 10/10 (slow and steady…we never really know what’s coming next…I had no idea how this movie would end even as it approached its final scenes)
Character Chemistry 9/10 (Siddiqui is an annoyance, but that’s what his character is supposed to be)
Acting 10/10 (Khan is a master of his trade…it won’t be long before we start seeing Kaur more frequently on the screen)
Screenplay 10/10
Directing  10/10 (masterful debut for Ritesh Batra)
Cinematography 8.5/10 (the backdrop of Mumbai is excellent…the locations of each scene do feel slightly cramped, though…it does make us feel like we are watching through a lens at times rather than up close and personal)
Sound 9.5/10 (there is happy singing on the buses and the streets one minute followed by an eerie silence the next…the cuts, at times, are choppy, but that adds to the quality of this film)
Hook and Reel 8.5/10 (took a few minutes to get into the subtitle mood)
Universal Relevance 10/10
93.5%bandon

So this movie was fantastic. It was very believable. And you are left with lots of questions. It returns to the quote, “Sometimes the wrong train will get you to the right station.” The dabbawala serves as the train. Rajeev is the station the train is supposed to go to, but the train ends up going to Fernandes instead. The two lonely people slowly fall in love without ever meeting face. It’s as if they were presented with an opportunity at a happiness long after that opportunity has passed them by. But rather than embracing the chance, they begin to question it. Fernandes is particularly guilty since it was he who was the one who backed out of the face-to-face meeting. He asked how a young, beautiful woman could be attracted to someone like him. Also, he questions whether he deserves to be happy. He’s lost his passion for his life before his wife passed away. And here Ila is, wondering why he walked away from her as soon as he saw her. She is willing to abandon her entire life for a chance to be with him. Receiving his note is the highlight of each of her days. She doesn’t quite understand why he would just up and leave when he thought they had a real connection.

Sometimes love doesn’t make sense. Sometimes we question love. Sometimes even when love does make sense, we question it. Sometimes we question love too much that it eventually goes away. Love is not perfect. Love can be patient, but it’s not going to wait forever. The end of the movie is up for interpretation. I guess how you interpret its ending is, perhaps, your outlook on love. I would hope that Fernandes and Ila find each other. While I think this movie is believable, I think that maybe Ila continued to try a little too hard after Fernandes walked away before the two had a chance to meet and then moved without really saying goodbye. It felt, at that point, that things weren’t 50/50. Maybe Fernandes might not be worth it, and Ila should turn her focus towards someone or something else. The ending all happened a little too quickly. These are only my minor gripes with the movie.