LUNCHBOX & ROSE TINTS
Too much expectation brutally kills, and to me its once again proved via the lunch box!
After reading flattering sundry news reports about The lunchbox, and how all at Cannes were impressed by its brilliance, and because of the stars, it seemed to be garnering, I was more than thrilled when the local kitty group decided to make it a "to be watched on a girls nite out" movie.
So four of us 40 plus women, with our power yoga and diet controlled slimmed figures, loreal straightened hairs, mall cultured T shirt and jeans,colosal kajal kareena style...in short.. hep, here and happening , in the now, women we would love to believe we are, which our mothers perhaps aspired to be, but shied from expressing, in their fourties....financially independent women who had thrown their shackles of the male domination and set out see the late night show - the husbands and kids told to fend for themselves as far as serving of dinner was concerned- and husbands, trying to be adjustingly largeheartedly modern, silently open mouthed, startled expressions but no real protests, giVing permissions not really sought, so as to not awaken the' menopausal psyco' In their women...in short women daring to live the american dream.
Back to the movie: I was pleasantly surprised when the credits rolled and claimed Dharma and UTV as the producers.Karan johar..mmm should be my kind of movie!. After a lot of 'good' films from them, it was not an unusually high expectation!
As the film unfolded, the plot seemed full of promise too. A middled aged bored and badly neglected house wife, sticking to her side of the bargain of looking after home and kids, and being somewhere lost in that identity, with little rights and unquestioned responsibilities. A woman whose spouse had long ago been sucked into a corporate artificial sophisticated lifestyle (a mandatory extra marital affair too) and now felt stuck with a functional but not flashy enough wife to go with his current corporate image.
And an almost retired childless widower whom life passed by without him knowing it. They interact through letters, via a mistake of wrong lunchbox delivery, bond without seeing each other, dream of running away to a worriless heaven called Bhutan, till reality intervenes to make them realise that they r so stuck in their respective roles, that they can't take the plunge they so think they r entitled to.
The treatment of the film is so sombre,(inspite of the light hearted moments thruout) that u r left wondering WHY?
Why does Karan johar want to rudely awaken the average middle class indian masses up from their lotus eating world of bollywood opium, to tell them that this and not KANK or KKHH or his other regular films are reality, which we in our rose tinted glasses, busy pursuing middle class american dreams kind of lifestyle was kinda beleiving to be real after all..
The whole theatre filled with people following their own version of the american drean shocked into an abrupt silence when we realised the movie was over without the definite happy ending that Kjo so poplarised ( and minted millions btw), and it felt like we who had come to attend a wedding was instead walking out of a mourning site. A shock sabha. Nobody seemed to have anything worthwhile to say to any body..the bitter aftertaste left us all speechless.
As I made out I was mentally remembering Madhuri's TV pe breaking news walla ghagra via agra and feeling totally cheated.
Out of the hall, my ever optimistic friend, grinned...well. they can make a sequel......they both separately go to Bhutan, and find each other and true love after the mandatory 26 reels or so!
Long live rose tints!
