The lunchbox verrà distribuito nelle sale italiane a partire dal 28 novembre 2013, grazie ad Academy Two, col titolo Lunchbox. Vi presento la locandina e il trailer. Lunchbox è in cartellone al Torino Film Festival 2013: il regista Ritesh Batra sarà nel capoluogo piemontese il 25 e il 26 novembre. Ne approfitto per segnalarvi alcuni articoli:
- A need for quietness, Bhumika K., The Hindu, 17 settembre 2013. Intervista rilasciata da Irrfan Khan:
'Why do we get this feeling that subtlety is not something an Indian audience agrees with?
I think market pressure is trying to create that kind of atmosphere. And it’s not just the Indian market. The whole world is on to a speedy roller coaster ride. It’s like the time has come to the end of the cone where everything has speeded up. And this is the struggle or fight to get noticed. That’s what marketing is all about. Getting noticed. So the easiest way is to make more noise. To show things in speed. That’s why there’s a tendency to find a shortcut. An easy way out. Not let the audience think, not let them breathe, that’s why everybody is doing that. But as human beings, we need to breathe, think. We are not machines, we are not designed to register things in a particular way. But even as there’s a pressure to build up speed and make more noise, there’s more need for a quietness, for a subtlety which gives you enough time to taste it.
Are people willing to do that? Most just seem to be in a hurry!
I think it’s a personal choice. Some people want to tell stories the way they want to tell them. The way it comes to them naturally. Sometimes people want to take the easy way out. Or some people really enjoy telling a story that way. Where things are faster, where they want the audience on the edge of the seat. I personally enjoy both these kind of films. But what I really enjoy is that a film should speak to me after I’ve watched it. It shouldn’t be like a one-night stand. Like you come out of the theatre and nothing’s left of the story. I don’t connect to such films. (...)
Karan Johar came on board for The Lunchbox!
I think everybody wants to expand their area. I don’t think Karan Johar will be supporting all kinds of films. He did it because this film has a heart and he could connect with it. It’s like you fall in love with somebody and you want to do anything and everything they want you to do. He really loved the story. He would like to do anything to help it find its feet'.
- Irrfan: I always missed the mango pickle in my lunchbox, Sonil Dedhia, Rediff, 17 settembre 2013:
'So was it an instant yes in the case of The Lunchbox?
I instantly said yes. The only thing I didn’t like was playing an old character all over again. You really have to make yourself feel like an old man physically as well as mentally and it takes a lot to get out of such a mould. When I played an old man in The Namesake, it was really difficult to get that character out of my system. (...)
Today, if Irrfan is associated with an art-house film it gets attention from the public. Do you think you’ve become a torch-bearer for such cinema?
I don’t understand the term art-house. For me, films are commercial art. If there’s no commerce in the art, then it won’t have any value. A film has to make some profit. Interestingly, the films I have been associated with have somehow ended up becoming the most successful films of that particular director. Whether it’s Ang Lee’s Life Of Pi or Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire or Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar or Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool. Another reason I don’t understand the term art-house is because according to me a film should engage its audience. I do not like boring cinema. Films should be entertaining and engaging. There are two types of films, A - the time pass cinema which I do not like, and B - the films that stay with you even after you’ve left the cinema hall. So if at all there’s credibility attached to my name it’s only because I will do only those films that engage and entertain. (...)
The film was well received at the Cannes Film Festival and got a standing ovation. Apparently, you were teary-eyed with this response.
Yes, that’s because I too was watching the film for the first time. Quite a few people walked out of the theatre mid-way and the director, Ritesh Batra, started wondering is the film that bad? The French producer then revealed that the people walking out of the theatre were all buyers who wanted to queue up to buy the film before anybody else does. This was the first time that an Indian film got sold out worldwide within a day. Studios were lining up to buy the film. We were targeting to give the film either to Fox Studios or Sony for the American market because these two studios rule the business there. But before we could arrange for the screenings, Sony had already bought the film! We realised that the film has universal appeal and will connect with people globally. We also hope that at least this year a right film gets chosen for the Oscars from India'.
- Recensione di Raja Sen, pubblicata il 20 settembre 2013 da Rediff. Sen attribuisce alla pellicola un sonoro *****:
'Ritesh Batra’s film - about a city and serendipity - might be about unremarkable folk, but it is a masterfully made and diligently restrained effort, one that impresses a viewer without impressing upon a viewer. It is a simple story with unanimous appeal, told with unshowy efficacy, and yet The Lunchbox is the most fascinating film to come out of Bombay in a very, very long time. (...) This is a film about happenstance, a wondrous what-if movie that lifts us from realism to something far better, and it’s only fair that - in ways unique to itself - the city conspires, throughout the film, to set these events into motion, to champion this unlikely romance, to give us hope. For Mumbai has always motored along on magic. Irrfan Khan plays Mr. Fernandez with a superb placidity, a clock-obeying government employee who treasures silence. Khan clearly relishes the amount of internalisation the role allows him, and savours the quiet, thoughtful, melancholy beats of the film, unhurried but with his timing immaculate. He delivers his few lines with fantastic ease - a deadpan gag about a blind man stands out - but soaks up the silences even better. (...) Khan is a magnificent actor who keeps getting better, and this is him at his finest. (...) Nimrat Kaur (...) pulls off the role of a wife with a world on her shoulders very impressively. It is a disarmingly natural performance that is impossible to forget and difficult to analyse, and in this limited space one may merely express admiration. (...) She’s excellent. (...) Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays it relentlessly, bearing down on the taciturn Fernandez with irresistibly good-natured oafishness. (...) Batra, who has also written The Lunchbox, has allowed his smashing actors tremendous room to improvise, all the while himself sketching in nuanced details about the city, its food-ferriers, and the many disparities Mumbai is crammed with. It is a film of multiple pleasures - small ones and overwhelming ones and exquisitely crafted ones - layered one on top of the other, with something for everyone, and so, so much for the cinematic glutton'.
Aggiornamento del 23 marzo 2014: nel nostro Paese Lunchbox ha incontrato il favore del pubblico malgrado la fugace programmazione. I numeri del botteghino italiano sono stati diffusi persino in India da Taran Adarsh, noto analista di Bollywood Hungama. The lunchbox si sta rivelando uno dei film indiani di maggior successo commerciale all'estero, soprattutto in Germania e negli Stati Uniti. Vi ricordo che Lunchbox è stato distribuito in Italia in netto anticipo rispetto agli Stati Uniti, e son soddisfazioni. Non è raro leggere qua è là accenni alla pellicola da parte dei (cronicamente disinteressati) media locali. Vi segnalo, fra le tante, la recensione (****) di Alessandro Antinori, pubblicata da Movieplayer il 28 novembre 2013.
Aggiornamento del 3 aprile 2014: il DVD di Lunchbox sarà in distribuzione nei negozi italiani a partire dal prossimo 16 aprile.
Vedi anche:
- Torino Film Festival 2013, 29 dicembre 2013
