The Lunchbox (2013), directed by Ritesh Batra, is a gem of Indian cinema. It beautifully explores themes of loneliness, human connection, and serendipity in a bustling urban landscape. Set in Mumbai, the story revolves around an unusual relationship that develops between a middle-aged widower, Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), and a neglected housewife, Ila (Nimrat Kaur), through a series of notes exchanged in a mistakenly delivered lunchbox. The movie’s strength lies in its subtle storytelling, evocative performances, and nuanced writing. Irrfan Khan’s restrained yet deeply emotional portrayal of Saajan is outstanding, while Nimrat Kaur brings warmth and vulnerability to her role. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as Saajan’s eager apprentice, Shaikh, adds humor and depth to the narrative. The Mumbai Dabbawala system serves as a unique backdrop, adding a layer of cultural authenticity. The film doesn’t rely on melodrama but instead thrives on quiet, poignant moments. The bittersweet ending leaves viewers with a sense of hope and introspection. The Lunchbox is a heartwarming, timeless tale of love and self-discovery, reminding us that even the smallest connections can leave lasting impacts. It’s a must-watch for fans of meaningful cinema. Verdict: Super Hit.

Awesome storytelling, excellent job by the whole team! You're totally missing out something if you haven't watched it yet.

Simple and efficient romantic drama that goes straight to what it wants to tell

The Lunchbox is a heartwarming Bollywood film that beautifully explores human connection through a mistaken lunch delivery. A must-watch for its simplicity, charm, and emotional depth.

An unusual and delightful film that opens the main characters' heart. Each feels alone but we watch as sharing brings about deeper understanding of personal responsibility.

Exceptional epistolary romantic movie starring Irrfan Khan(Saajan Fernandez) and Nimrat Kaur(Ila), threading love, despair and hope through misplaced lunchboxes,set up in Bombay. Story and direction done by debutant Ritesh Batra while Anurag Kashyap and co are part of the production. Navazuddin Siddique did excellent performance. Movie is of top quality art content, philosophies, strong story element which emphasizes plain emotions, great frames, excellent literature elements. Irrfan plays the role of a boring old widowed insurance officer while Nimrat Kaur is of a perturbed mind trying to impress her husband, to finally find her husband is in another affair. Thereafter, the story plots instance by instance where Irrfan and Nimrat ends up planning to elope to Bhutan, but director leaves the conclusion open to the viewers to decide. Overall, I liked the movie. Mostly, if love story well put, I like them. Some people dont. I loved the beauty of reading small chits of one line love letter send back and forth. Top dialogues: "kabhi kabhi galti train se sahi jaga pohenchthi hein"|"nobody buys yesterday's lottery ticket" The movie was well received by critics, media and box office. It stunned people world wide, even a Japanese dubbed version was released. Won many awards across, how ever sparked controversy in the India on not getting selected for Oscar submission: Anurag Kashyap even deleted his social media handles in the rage. Apparently, it was Marendra Nodis friends movie which got selected that year, as usual that movie was not meeting the basic criteria too.

A very silly, eccentric/surreal type comedy watch from the Monty Python team, this is well worth a watch. Some scenes, I felt, worked better than others but there were enough funny moments to keep me entertained regardless. I particularly enjoyed the stoning scene and ones where John Cleese's character gets very wound up! (no change there then referencing Fawlty Towers et al). I also liked the over the top/shrill tone of voice used for some characters. Its silly and entertaining, with the usual Monty Python opening titles, with words in lumps of stone falling around and things. I'd recommend this film.

I probably would have liked The Lunchbox quite a bit more in the moment if the version I ended up seeing did not have terribly translated subtitles; when the characters speak English the poor quality of the transcription really showed. But that's hardly the fault of anyone involved in the actual production, so I'll try to be as fair as I can having seen this film through what feels like a thick pane of glass. The Lunchbox uses a classic formula (two lonely people brought together by innocuous chance) and puts a bit of a twist on it, keeping the characters physically separated and moving from comedic territory to more of a subdued dramatic feel as Irrfan Khan' Saajan and Nimrat Kaur's Ila develop a relationship by sharing the emotional hardship of their relatively monotonous, everyday lives. There isn't much in the way of a whirlwind romance with giddy excitement and a sweep-off-your-feet moment, but instead a more restrained passion as both characters find in each other someone to open up to about problems that they had relegated to their inner thoughts as the result of loneliness; their respective presence forms something of a light in the darkness towards which each character cautiously crawls. The film earns its status as a film well beyond what could have been a standard (albeit creative and sweet) romcom premise. Ultimately the film touches on quite a bit of sincere territory - unfulfilled ambition, societal expectations, lovelessness, aging, kindness and friendship; it all proceeds with resolute but unrushed pacing and comes together quite well. A very nice romantic film that hasn't really received much attention in Europe or the United States since a very positive reception at Cannes in 2013. (3.5/5)

Utterly brilliant, a perfect film.

Your review will help others decide whether to watch.

Lovely story. Brings up India's social issues. Great actors. Beautiful scenes of India.

Masterclass performances from the casts, especially from Irrfan Khan made this lunch so beautiful and tasty..

Indeed an experience.

There is something soothing and calm about Irrfan Khan presence on the screen. The Lunchbox contains your favorite dishes and doesn't disappoint.

Lunch Box-Hindi Film (2013) In all love stories, a boy and girl or a man and woman with totally conflicting backgrounds are considered. They both overcome many hurdles and come together or very rarely fall apart. Several love stories have been churned in the past with lovers belonging to different castes, communities, states, borders, mother tongues, physical disabilities, economic disparities etc. etc. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or Kalidasa's Abhijnana Sakunthalam motivated our film makers since the times immemorial. When we tend to believe that all love stories have been exhausted, the film Lunch Box must have come as a refreshing breeze in 2013. I wondered how I missed this film so far, but when I watched it recently, I thought of putting with great reverence, my appreciation as a flower in the garland of its reputation. Ila (Sanskrit meaning earth) is a married woman with a child. Her husband does not pay any attention to her. She feels her married life has become monotonous and boring. Saajan (Lover) is a widower and leads a sullen and lonely life. Both Ila and Saajan exchange letters through wrongly delivered lunch box by a Mumbai Dabbahwalla. How Ila and Saajan open up their hearts and come closer to each other to rid of their drabbing lives form the rest of the story. First let us consider Ila. She is helped by a couple of characters in the film to arrive at clarity of her mind. Mrs. Deshpande, the aunty in the upstairs portion tells her that a woman can reach out to her husband through his stomach. So she cooks delicious and good food for Rajeev her husband, but is unfortunately delivered to Saajan. Ila tries to bond with Rajeev by igniting his libido. The Director's imagination is at its peak in showing Ila without duppata and Rajeev's mind ignoring the real and hovering over the virtual. What a woman expects from her husband is his time and attention when he is at home. Her heart does not really aspire for material things. And it is not happening for Ila. Ila learns that aunty derives inspiration from her ceiling fan, which runs continuously without fuming and fretting. Her husband needs to look at the ceiling fan always running to be out of coma. Aunty also spends most of her time listening to audio tapes. There is another character Yashvi, Ila's daughter. It is sarcastically shown that the natural instinct of a girl child is to play with inanimate objects like dolls, which in latter years may help her to manage with the husband. Both the aunty and Ila's mother nail in Ila's mind that the life of a woman for generations is always confined to the four walls of a house serving the most undeserved. For Ila, married life appears to be mere exhibitionalism. The quintessence of a family is in its emotional satisfaction. Ila symbolizing the earth has touched her limits of forbearance. She gradually draws herself close to Saajan. There are two suicides in the film. One suicide teaches Ila that a woman has to overcome her short-comings courageously instead of becoming the victim of circumstances. Another one is her own brother, a failed personality. Ila visits her mother when her father died. She could notice the degree of disgust and oppression her mother has been putting up with her father and her great relief and freedom after his death. Ila feels how fragile any woman's life can be especially when her husband and her son are not there to support. Incidentally Rajeev is reluctant to have a son and Ila felt depraved. Coming to Saajan. If one does not kill the time, the time kills. Saajan spends his lonely evenings with an old transistor radio or repeatedly watching wornout video tapes. His mind is like his old bicycle moving little forward to embrace a sweet family life, like the one seen through his neighbour's window. In the next moment it moves backwards to dwell in its emptiness. Ila and Saajan want to meet each other. Both of them are shown waving away insects (obstacles) in front of their faces meaning they arrived at a common vision. They choose a restaurant for their meeting. On the way, Saajan meets an old woman in the electric train staring at him. Saajan felt as if his age is suitable for her. At restaurant he sees Ila and backs out without meeting her as she is too young for him. He is autumn. She is spring. Some more letters are exchanged between them through lunch box. Saajan is yet to get the necessary impetus to make further moves for Ila . Shaikh is an office-subordinate of Saajan. He and his fiancee Mehrunnisa come from diagonally opposite backgrounds like in any love story. One is an orphan and the other is having a large family. Their live-in relationship is purely based on mutual trust, companionship and masti. Wedding is a coincidence. Saajan gets a clue from his friend Shaikh that though one travels ticketless in a train, one can buy a long term pass for comfortable journey. Even the wrong train can take a man to the right station. Means is not important... only the end. Ila takes a taxi to come to Saajan's office. The taxi experiences a little jerk freeing her mind from all possible hurdles. She finds Saajan has already left for Nasik his native town. But she comes to know from Shaikh that Saajan was waiting for her at his wedding. She confidently sells of her jewellery to jump-start her life in Bhutan where she wants to amplify her happiness five times. One can see the clarity and determination in Ila, when she instructs her school going daughter 'look for the water pool in the front, take diversion, do not look back and it is your journey' ....all by facial expressions without single dialogue. Saajan boards the Nasik train. A ripe old passenger is sitting in the opposite seat. He realises old age makes a person a destitute. Saajan gets down from the train in the mid- way and comes back home. He identifies himself with a cricket ball which is batted and bowled by every one. He holds the ball tight in his hands. Now he is determined for Ila. Next day he commutes with Dabbahwallas in search of Ila's home. His actions are endorsed by sounds of 'Hail Vittal...Hail Vittal' as blessings by God Vittal. One expects both Ila and Saajan are soulmates once lost but found themselves now. But the story suddenly becomes a conundrum. Any on-screen conclusion for Ila and Saajan will be out-right rejected by conservative Indian audience as it amounts to an infatuated affair between a married woman with a child and a widower, whom she never met. The film could be branded as a revolt against social norms and could have flopped. But the Director Riteshji deftly takes an intelligent recourse to an open-ended solution and leaves it for the audience to extrapolate. This is a master stroke. Several places, one can see the Ditrector's imaginative streaks. For example, when Saajan is rectifying the accounts prepared by Shaikh, a servant is shown mopping the floor. However, even in the best restaurants, there can be a fly in a bowl of soup. For example, we feel jerky when Saajan reveals the name of his girlfriend Ila to Sheikh. Such things happen in teenage love, where the boys take pride in announcing the names of their girlfriends. Saajan is a sophisticated and matured character. He should respect and protect the identity of Ila. He should not make it explicit until both of them come to a concrete decision. The inebriated conditions of Saajan do not justify his actions. At this stage, I started analysing how Lunch Box became a super-hit film? Is it because of neat script? Or creative direction? Or amazing histrionics of Nimratji and lrrfanji? Or awesome camera work? Truly all of them went in the right proportion in this well-crafted film. But more important than all of these is, one can find real-life characters in the film...the characters who are crushed between their dreams and dreary lives. For them the film is a silent thunder. Lunch Box remains therefore a classic in the annals of Indian Films-Jai Hind Lunch Box-Hindi Film (2013) In all love stories, a boy and girl or a man and woman with totally conflicting backgrounds are considered. They both overcome many hurdles and come together or very rarely fall apart. Several love stories have been churned in the past with lovers belonging to different castes, communities, states, borders, mother tongues, physical disabilities, economic disparities etc. etc. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or Kalidasa's Abhijnana Sakunthalam motivated our film makers since the times immemorial. When we tend to believe that all love stories have been exhausted, the film Lunch Box must have come as a refreshing breeze in 2013. I wondered how I missed this film so far, but when I watched it recently, I thought of putting with great reverence, my appreciation as a flower in the garland of its reputation. Ila (Sanskrit meaning earth) is a married woman with a child. Her husband does not pay any attention to her. She feels her married life has become monotonous and boring. Saajan (Lover) is a widower and leads a sullen and lonely life. Both Ila and Saajan exchange letters through wrongly delivered lunch box by a Mumbai Dabbahwalla. How Ila and Saajan open up their hearts and come closer to each other to rid of their drabbing lives form the rest of the story. First let us consider Ila. She is helped by a couple of characters in the film to arrive at clarity of her mind. Mrs. Deshpande, the aunty in the upstairs portion tells her that a woman can reach out to her husband through his stomach. So she cooks delicious and good food for Rajeev her husband, but is unfortunately delivered to Saajan. Ila tries to bond with Rajeev by igniting his libido. The Director's imagination is at its peak in showing Ila without duppata and Rajeev's mind ignoring the real and hovering over the virtual. What a woman expects from her husband is his time and attention when he is at home. Her heart does not really aspire for material things. And it is not happening for Ila. Ila learns that aunty derives inspiration from her ceiling fan, which runs continuously without fuming and fretting. Her husband needs to look at the ceiling fan always running to be out of coma. Aunty also spends most of her time listening to audio tapes. There is another character Yashvi, Ila's daughter. It is sarcastically shown that the natural instinct of a girl child is to play with inanimate objects like dolls, which in latter years may help her to manage with the husband. Both the aunty and Ila's mother nail in Ila's mind that the life of a woman for generations is always confined to the four walls of a house serving the most undeserved. For Ila, married life appears to be mere exhibitionalism. The quintessence of a family is in its emotional satisfaction. Ila symbolizing the earth has touched her limits of forbearance. She gradually draws herself close to Saajan. There are two suicides in the film. One suicide teaches Ila that a woman has to overcome her short-comings courageously instead of becoming the victim of circumstances. Another one is her own brother, a failed personality. Ila visits her mother when her father died. She could notice the degree of disgust and oppression her mother has been putting up with her father and her great relief and freedom after his death. Ila feels how fragile any woman's life can be especially when her husband and her son are not there to support. Incidentally Rajeev is reluctant to have a son and Ila felt depraved. Coming to Saajan. If one does not kill the time, the time kills. Saajan spends his lonely evenings with an old transistor radio or repeatedly watching wornout video tapes. His mind is like his old bicycle moving little forward to embrace a sweet family life, like the one seen through his neighbour's window. In the next moment it moves backwards to dwell in its emptiness. Ila and Saajan want to meet each other. Both of them are shown waving away insects (obstacles) in front of their faces meaning they arrived at a common vision. They choose a restaurant for their meeting. On the way, Saajan meets an old woman in the electric train staring at him. Saajan felt as if his age is suitable for her. At restaurant he sees Ila and backs out without meeting her as she is too young for him. He is autumn. She is spring. Some more letters are exchanged between them through lunch box. Saajan is yet to get the necessary impetus to make further moves for Ila . Shaikh is an office-subordinate of Saajan. He and his fiancee Mehrunnisa come from diagonally opposite backgrounds like in any love story. One is an orphan and the other is having a large family. Their live-in relationship is purely based on mutual trust, companionship and masti. Wedding is a coincidence. Saajan gets a clue from his friend Shaikh that though one travels ticketless in a train, one can buy a long term pass for comfortable journey. Even the wrong train can take a man to the right station. Means is not important... only the end. Ila takes a taxi to come to Saajan's office. The taxi experiences a little jerk freeing her mind from all possible hurdles. She finds Saajan has already left for Nasik his native town. But she comes to know from Shaikh that Saajan was waiting for her at his wedding. She confidently sells of her jewellery to jump-start her life in Bhutan where she wants to amplify her happiness five times. One can see the clarity and determination in Ila, when she instructs her school going daughter 'look for the water pool in the front, take diversion, do not look back and it is your journey' ....all by facial expressions without single dialogue. Saajan boards the Nasik train. A ripe old passenger is sitting in the opposite seat. He realises old age makes a person a destitute. Saajan gets down from the train in the mid- way and comes back home. He identifies himself with a cricket ball which is batted and bowled by every one. He holds the ball tight in his hands. Now he is determined for Ila. Next day he commutes with Dabbahwallas in search of Ila's home. His actions are endorsed by sounds of 'Hail Vittal...Hail Vittal' as blessings by God Vittal. One expects both Ila and Saajan are soulmates once lost but found themselves now. But the story suddenly becomes a conundrum. Any on-screen conclusion for Ila and Saajan will be out-right rejected by conservative Indian audience as it amounts to an infatuated affair between a married woman with a child and a widower, whom she never met. The film could be branded as a revolt against social norms and could have flopped. But the Director Riteshji deftly takes an intelligent recourse to an open-ended solution and leaves it for the audience to extrapolate. This is a master stroke. Several places, one can see the Ditrector's imaginative streaks. For example, when Saajan is rectifying the accounts prepared by Shaikh, a servant is shown mopping the floor. However, even in the best restaurants, there can be a fly in a bowl of soup. For example, we feel jerky when Saajan reveals the name of his girlfriend Ila to Sheikh. Such things happen in teenage love, where the boys take pride in announcing the names of their girlfriends. Saajan is a sophisticated and matured character. He should respect and protect the identity of Ila. He should not make it explicit until both of them come to a concrete decision. The inebriated conditions of Saajan do not justify his actions. At this stage, I started analysing how Lunch Box became a super-hit film? Is it because of neat script? Or creative direction? Or amazing histrionics of Nimratji and lrrfanji? Or awesome camera work? Truly all of them went in the right proportion in this well-crafted film. But more important than all of these is, one can find real-life characters in the film...the characters who are crushed between their dreams and dreary lives. For them the film is a silent thunder. Lunch Box remains therefore a classic in the annals of Indian Films-Jai Hind

I don't easily give 4 stars to a movie, I really loved this movie probably because of the inspiring romantic plot, the marvelous acting and the original atmosphere. It was very intriguing and fun.

Wonderful poignant revisit to one of Irrfan's lovely films. His silent acting in this is a masterclass. RIP.

India lost its only chance to win the Oscar in Foreign Film Category. Ask the foreign critics and you will know the answer. It was simple and yet so thought-provoking. It will always remain a classic as a light-hearted movie showing emotions and dilemmas hand in hand.

'The Lunchbox' is the most heartfelt, heartwarming and emotional journey I ever took since so many years. Not only is it unforgettable and romantic, it is an effective crowd-pleaser with superbly anchored performances. Ritesh Batra, I can say, has created a perfect film and made a memorable directorial debut. This love letter to Mumbai locals is something so worthy, I would read it whenever I feel disheartened. Such a delight!

deep-moving-heartfelt