Welcome to my 2026 project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.
Today’s feature is from the year 2013, we are headed to India to have a bit of a nosh…
Movie: The Lunchbox
Year: 2013
Director: Ritesh Batra
Country: India
The Elevator Pitch: Ila is working hard to get her husband to appreciate her more by packing his lunchbox but when it is mistakenly delivered to a stranger it gives her a new lease on life.
How Was the Movie?:
I actually really liked this movie, my husband was a little less excited about it. There is something a little depressing in the set up wherein the main character, Ila, is surrounded by women who have made themselves small and invisible in multiple ways to serve men who are not grateful to them and to some degree these men take advantage of the fact that society simply runs on women’s work. However, there’s a lot unexamined about society in this movie which also contains key elements of underclasses who are even more invisiblized that they don’t get to be the star of a movie and society leans even harder on their backs.
The societal things that might rub you the wrong way don’t stop there of course, everything from Ila’s incomprehensible and incompatible arranged marriage, the retirement of Saajan, the training of the next man to fill his shoes who is comically under qualified but gets hired because of a sob story. Even the concept of dabbawala, a constant underclass of men whose job is to ferry lunches to and from the middle class all day might raise some concerns.
Ila’s main tangible relationship is with a woman upstairs whom she never sees but attains advice from giving the impression of an omniscient but meddling god which I really loved. Their relationship is built off yelling and things they incidentally hear from the others apartments. Since the two main characters also never meet their relationship is built in the language of food and small notes in which they are allowed to reveal things about themselves they would conceal from other people. It makes for an extremely engaging movie even if you see where the whole thing is headed basically from the jump.
The downfall is actually probably in the movie just being too digestible and ignoring all of the things that would make this a meaty and interesting film to anyone but an international audience who is unfamiliar with the specific constraints and movements in Indian society. Anyone who will just accept what is put on screen. While it’s very sympathetic to the women in the film it isn’t even vaguely questioning of the systems that are surrounding all of the characters positions, which made a very annoying few hours after the film where I realized everything could have been better if only small changes in society were made.
The acting is a particular stand out in this movie and of course, personally, I am always fascinated by the use of English as a code switching marker to denote class and relationships between people in India.
This movie is presumably contemporary to 2014 based on the name-drop of the Forbes article about the dabbawalas and another plot point (which references something from 2008) but the entire work space is paper stacked horrifically on top of each other, we do see phones and texting but not much in the way of full blown computers and of course, most of the systems and transit are older style so it gives it this in between feeling. For all I know most things in India are still done on paper, plenty of America still is after all.
What was for Dinner?:
I feel like I really dropped the ball and just made a super easy dinner but easy doesn’t mean bad.
I made Masoor Dal and Paratha. Masoor dal is just red lentils. Generally I would put a tarka (flavored/spiced oil) on top of the dal but instead I was super lazy and just put all the spices inside of the dal itself. This results in a spicier dish overall but personally I think you get more flavor per bite. While I don’t usually make dal dishes that are this simple it was actually really nice and comforting to eat something like this. Think of it as the butter and pasta of dal. I also make my dal pretty thick because my husband hates soup-y things but I like to think it was thematically appropriate because it would travel better by tiffin this way also.
I also made paratha because what is dinner without a delicious starchy thing to eat it with? I usually make roti or naan because they’re much more instantaneous but it was extremely satisfying to rip the flaky layers of the paratha apart and the crunch you get from each flake is hard to beat so if you have the time then I suggest making it because it’s not much harder than naan it simply has to sit and relax for two hours.
Overall this was obviously a 10/10 dinner and I would eat it pretty much any time. This is also one of the easier dinners I’ve made for this project so far. I’d really suggest people make it.
That’s it for 2013, see you in the future year of 2014!