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When making simple distinctions between types of cinema, we often think in terms of "character-driven" (or "relationship-driven") films as opposed to action-driven (or incident-driven) films. We also tend to think of the former category as being full of conversation, an opportunity for a dialogue-writer to show off his chomps: personally speaking, the first such movies that first come to my mind are talkative chamber dramas like Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Ingmar Bergman's Persona.
A couple of weeks ago saw the release of Shuddh Desi Romance, a movie that contains a great deal of talk: in fact, it opens with a monologue directed at the viewer by the central character Raghu (Sushant Singh Rajput), about Indian society's many hypocrisies. Later, Raghu's romance with Gayatri (Parineeti Chopra) often has the two of them dissecting what they are doing, rather than staying in the moment; a classic case of instinct pitted against cerebra. Much of this is in the tradition of romantic films like Before Sunrise, or even a Woody Allen movie where characters self-consciously investigate their own motivations to the point where you wonder if they will ever actually get anything done. Even the song lyrics comment on the "silliness" of "hamaari love life" and its "lambi lambi baatein".
But pre-conceived notions about movie categories can quickly fly out the window. If Shuddh Desi Romance was all talk-talk-analyse-analyse (and did an engaging job of it, apart from a listless final section), Ritesh Batra's lovely The Lunchbox is a reminder that a "relationship film" doesn't have to be driven by pages of dialogue. For me, one of the pleasures of this film was that some of its most effective moments relied on visual storytelling, requiring special engagement on the viewer's part over and above what is being explicitly said by the characters.
A marker of that visual engagement is an object, a tiffin lunch nestled in a green-and-white cover, which makes its way - via Mumbai's famous dabba-wallah - from a home to an office. As the dabba-wallah's take countless lunch-boxes through rush-hour traffic to railway stations, our attention remains fixed on the distinct green-and-white bag, the sunlight dappling on it through the train's windows. Then, less than 10 minutes into the film, come two wordless scenes that tell us the "plot" is under way. A middle-aged man named Fernandes (Irrfan Khan) unzips the green-white cover and starts to open his tiffin, but we see that something is off. What began as an almost unconscious action - something he mechanically does at exactly this time each day - becomes more deliberate; we can tell that the container he is opening is not the sort of container he is accustomed to. In the next scene, the container has been returned to the doorstep of a woman named Ila (Nimrat Kaur), and her movements as she picks up the bag are just as mechanical as Fernandes's were, but then she hesitates, weighs the tiffin in her hand, realises it is empty - clearly not an everyday occurrence. A look of cautious pleasure crosses her face.
Not a word has been spoken in these two scenes, even the gestures aren't especially pronounced, yet the attentive viewer can easily figure out what has happened. There has been a mistake in the delivery of a lunch box; Mr Fernandes has eaten the food meant for Ila's husband; Ila, who is used to leftovers being sent back, is pleased that her cooking has been appreciated. These sequences are so fluid, so well constructed and performed, that we have no trouble accepting the premise or what follows: Ila discovers the mistake but sends Fernandes lunch again, along with a letter - and then these two people who know nothing about each other begin an unlikely correspondence by dabba.
Understatement in cinema can be a tricky thing. Get it wrong and you're in danger of not just making the film flat and uninvolving, but also appearing just as self-conscious and forced as the "over-doer". The Lunchbox gets understatement and restraint exactly right, both in the outstanding lead performances and in Batra's delicate screenplay, which works on the "show, don't tell" principle. The viewer is constantly invited to participate in this story, to work things out as layers are slowly peeled away: what is this person thinking, what is likely to happen next? And this is most satisfying - though it also means this isn't the sort of film you should be watching if you can't tear your eyes away from the hypnotic glow of your cell-phone.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer
