The Lunchbox (Dabba)

THE LUNCHBOX (Dabba)          B-             

India  France  Germany  USA  (104 mi)  2013  ‘Scope d:  Ritesh Batra     Official Site [United States]

During the hustle and bustle of massive commuter traffic getting to and from work in Mumbai, India, where workers must negotiate the many jampacked bus and trainlines involved, there’s also the predictable routine of the empty jobs themselves, many of which offer little variety to the dreary and monotonous day-to-day existence, where individuals are pitted against the harsh and impersonal conditions of surviving in the city.  With this backdrop, it’s easy to see how so many people’s lives can get distracted or lose their way in the sheer mayhem of survival, as few have time any more for the personal attention of lending a helping hand, where the exhausting toll of the accumulating pressures from getting through one day to the next can be overwhelming.  In the collective disorder of a daily massive traffic jam, this film takes a look at the 120-year old practice of Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs, a community of about 5000 dabba (lunchbox) deliverymen who deliver home-cooked meals from housewives or selected food services to busy husbands at work, then returning the empty boxes afterwards.  Most of those involved in the business are illiterate, yet they perfectly weave their way through a labyrinth of streets and addresses where a Harvard University study has concluded that they rarely if ever deliver the lunchboxes to a wrong address.  While this film was originally conceived as a documentary about Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs, the director’s original screenplay was developed with the help of the Sundance Writer’s Workshop, turning this into an intricate character study that wants to be an old-fashioned romantic comedy.    

Seen through the eyes of two individuals, Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a beautiful young and neglected housewife who lovingly prepares elaborate dishes to attract her husband’s attention, continually seen calling to her Auntie living upstairs caring for her infirmed husband, who always has a magical cure for missing ingredients, dropping them in a basket lowered by a rope.  The two of them conspire to get Ila’s husband back from the job he’s apparently married to, as he’s largely absent from the home, which includes a young daughter, and when he is there, he’s completely disinterested.  While Ila’s life exists between the four walls of her apartment where she’s seemingly confined, she’s devoted to her daughter and playfully communicates with her Auntie all day long, turning into a running gag, as the Auntie is never seen but only heard, but she easily has some of the most comical lines in the whole film.  When she takes special care to prepare a culinary delight that is her husband’s favorite, he barely notices when he gets home, but from his rather standard reaction she realizes her lunchbox was sent to someone else.  So she places a note in the next day’s meal which is received by Saajan (Irrfan Khan), a government accountant working in a nondescript and impersonalized working environment, a man who spends a good part of his day simply getting to and from work, so by the time he’s back to his home, a small dwelling where he lives alone, he smokes off a ledge after preparing his own small meal and peers into the delicious-looking family style meal being devoured by a family across the way.  Saajan has worked the same job for 35 years and is nearing retirement, but his future is uncertain after his wife died years ago.  Somehow, by some supposedly impossible error, these two lonely souls connect and share thoughts about their lives through a series of notes passed to each other. 

This sudden departure from the normal routine has a way of jumpstarting new energy into their lives, where each day holds an element of anticipation.  No sooner does Saajan become enthralled at what awaits him from his mystery woman but he’s continually interrupted by the new person hired to take his place after retirement, the overeager Shaaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), whose loud, unbridled enthusiasm contrasts with Saajan’s more quietly reserved style, as he prefers to savor these moments alone, conjuring up his own imaginary world, but is instead continually hounded by the new guy.  When Shaaikh explains that he’s an orphan who taught himself everything, having spent his life moving from place to place, he draws the expected sympathy from Saajan who finally acknowledges him and even invites him to share his treasured meals, as all many Indian workers have for lunch is just two bananas, where Shaaikh upgrades his lunch to include two apples, which he gladly shares.  While the movie conveniently leaves Shaaikh out of the picture while Saajan reads his notes, the intimacy between the two strangers has grown to actually considering a future together, as Saajan is unsure of his plans post-retirement, but develops an imaginary scenario that includes Ila.  While the story itself is decidedly light and is something of a choreography of missed direction, the narrative is developed around the preparation of savory meals, where attention to detail is the film’s appeal, where the two leads are fully developed characters, becoming the intimate focus of the film, much more than the comic relief of the secondary roles.  While this is a perfectly enjoyable film, among the festival favorites, there’s little lasting effects afterwards, as it’s fairly mainstream arthouse entertainment, where what’s unusual is the meticulous detail drawn by immersing the film in the rare and distinct atmosphere of the Mumbai Dabbawallahs, where hot and steamy overpopulation is seen in all its glory.    

Life of Pi – 3D

LIFE OF PI – 3D         B-                   

USA  (127 mi)  2012  d:  Ang Lee

Much like Cloud Atlas (2012), this is another example of Hollywood excess, as these guys love to throw their money around, this time somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million dollars, which is considered a bargain for a hi-tech, special effects film.  To give you an example of the unstable nature of the business, not the least of which is financial, initially the production team targeted director M. Night Shyamalan in 2003, who shares Indian roots with the film, but he chose another film, LADY IN THE WATER (2006), leading to the choice in 2005 of Alfonso Cuarón who also chose another project, CHILDREN OF MEN (2006), then later in 2005 the pick was Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who began writing and adapting the screenplay, and even started shooting in India before abandoning the project.  So Ang Lee, hired shortly afterwards, is actually the 4th director chosen to make this film.  In other major changes, Tobey Maguire was originally hired to play the reporter, but Ang Lee chose not to use a recognizable face and deleted all his scenes, reshooting with a different actor.  Such is the nature of show business.  The film is largely a child’s fantasy adventure tale written for the screen by David Magee, the screenwriter of FINDING NEVERLAND (2004), an overly dour look at J.M. Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, this time adapting the 2001 Booker Prize-winning bestselling novel by Yann Martel, an interesting literary prize awarded for the best full-length work of fiction from the former British Commonwealth, in this case India.  Shot in 3D, and while many are raving about its use here, including Roger Ebert  Ang Lee: Of water and Pi - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times calling it “the best use of 3D I've ever seen,” there are really only a few scenes where the use is significant, with one being the opening credit sequence, which is a montage of various animals joyously frolicking in the lush foliage of an Indian zoo, which has a playful ease about it, and is certainly a nice way to introduce animals living in harmony with both people and the natural world around them.  A good hour goes by after that where the 3D use is sporadic and not altogether significant.   

Set in 3 different time periods, beginning in the present, Irrfan Khan as a middle-aged man named Pi relates a personal story to a visiting journalist, Rafe Spall, which becomes the novel the film is based upon, explaining not only where he got his name, but also how he came to have faith in God.  Except for the finale, and other brief moments, the story is told entirely in flashback, one period at 12 and another at 16.  The youngest addresses Pi’s family, as his father owns and operates a zoo, but more significantly explores his spiritual interest in pursuing Hinduism, Islam, and Catholicism, eventually becoming a Hindu Catholic, which may as well be part of the Bahai faith, as he tends to accept a universality of religions.  While this spiritual initiation is supposed to come full circle by the end of the film, that’s not really how it plays out, as instead this is seen almost exclusively as a fantasy adventure story, where the religious affiliation is negated by the existentialist aspect of the journey.  For those inclined to see proof of God in the storytelling, as Pi apparently does, this is certainly not forced upon the viewer, as the overall drama is adventure based. When the adventure is over, the story peters out.  Pi’s family decides to move to Canada, bringing with them all the zoo animals which they intend to sell, but they are shipwrecked en route and Pi is separated from his family, the only eventual human survivor of the accident.  Inexplicably, Pi escapes with a zebra, an oranguatang, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger on a rescue raft, but by the end of the journey, it’s only a young boy and a tiger that survive.  Along the way, they encounter many adventures, most of which includes addressing the overriding fear of one another, as Pi literally has to construct an alternate life raft tied to the main raft that separates him from co-existing with a near starving carnivore.  The mad and ferocious rush of the shipwrecking storm eventually subsides to a tranquil calm, where the monotony of living through days after days on end slows the pace to a crawl, and each to their separate corners, so to speak.  

Some of the film’s most beautiful and transcendent moments occur during this peaceful interim, where the ocean turns translucent turquoise and the mind’e eye sees the entire cosmos reflected within, not only giant whales and exotic fish glowing in the dark, but also the faces of his family, the planets and the galaxy, where at least for one spectacular moment, 3D perfectly captures a poetic recreation of Buddhist enlightenment, a realization of nirvana.  While this is a moment when starvation alters the perception of reality, blurring the realms of existence, these are easily the most abstractly unique and unforgettable images of the film.  But mostly this is a Biblical Job endurance test for both human and animal alike, perhaps one and the same, where by the time the near-death experience envelops them, they are both reduced to skin and bones, the beast inside finally tamed, the savage fierceness of each literally sapped out of them, where all that’s left is praying for a miracle.  Ang Lee has always been a visually complex filmmaker, known for having a unique, chameleon-like quality of artistic metamorphosis, as the diversity and range of his work is literally stunning, and while he may have been searching for a novel use of 3D as a new cinematic language (as they all claim), where the experience of the film is as transforming as the book, unfortunately, except for a few priceless moments, much of this experience is a bit of a slow slog, especially the over-emphasis on verbal narration that can grow endless, actually undermining any visual effect, growing most tedious when the overly frustrated and crazed character starts calling out God, acting defiantly as if he’s ready to die.  While he may have been the sole human survivor, much of this is due to his reckless behavior at the time of the shipwreck, as he was already separated from the others by stupidly roaming the outer shipdecks in the middle of a storm, lucky he wasn’t blown away or washed overboard.  Despite creating an impressive CGI tiger, the Hollywood glossed, computer generated, artificial look of the screen tends to monopolize the viewer experience after awhile, where the ocean bears no resemblance to an ocean, and where a lack of dramatic engagement defines this adventure story, as it’s the human element that never rises above the material, especially a weak finale that undercuts everything that happened before.