About The Lunchbox (2013)

I recently watched "The Lunchbox" on DVD, in Singapore, after purchasing it at Mustafa. For those of you who don't know what Mustafa is, please, please, pleaseeeeeee do yourself a favor: google "Mustafa Centre Singapore" and put it as one of your go-to place when you go to Singapore.

You'll be amazed. This shopping centre opens 24 hours, and carries everything, I repeat: everything, you can think of. Clothes. Soaps. Medicines. Electronic goods. Footwear. Watches. Foreign exchange. even JEWELRY. Yes, they sell gold. At one point, they even sell cars. Like, yeah, cars.....

Anyway, not going to talk about Mustafa, even though if I had a chance to interview the owner, I would build a dedicated post website for them, more like a Mustafa fan club, complete with a how-to-find-x guide ebook. We can call ourselves: Mustafan.

About The Lunchbox (2013) now...
This film won so many awards, and I can understand the appeal. The premise of the film is whether you can fall in love with someone you have never met. First of all, if you like 50 Shades of Grey type of thing, move over. The Lunchbox is a love story that shows no physical interaction whatsoever in its 104-min running time. The only interaction that the two "lovers" have is through the lunchbox, that was mistakenly delivered to one of them.

"I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to," said one of the lines in the lunchbox note exchanges.

Is it really true? When we were a kid, we were told to repeat stuff mainly so (I assume) we could stick it to our head. As we are growing older, the process of remembering stays the same, but what about the process of forgetting?

Forgetting is such a paradox. When we want to forget something, we need to first remember what it is we want to forget. And guess what? Sometimes we are stuck with remembering that we need to forget about X, rather than actually forgetting X. Confusing...

#spoileralert
In The Lunchbox, one of the lovers chose to leave. I think at the end of the day, separation is the first step of forgetting. Like some unsuccessful LDR doers say, "It's the distance."

Here's my unapologetically-amateur rating for The Lunchbox: 8/10
Directing: 9/10
Cinematography: 8/10
Editing: 8/10
Wardrobe/Make-up/Hair-do: 7/10
Acting: 8/10
Script: 9/10
Production Design: 7/10


Let me know what you think if you watch it by any chance :)

About the science of falling in love

This is how I fell in love

Exactly this

And I know it because I did it before. I've read about the experiment in a few articles before. Having an experience as a research assistant on Emotional Intelligence, I know a thing or two about Interpersonal Relationship and how openness can affect your relationship with (who you thought is) a stranger.

I don't know how to fall out of love with someone though. Can the reverse be true? Like you just need to not share? You just need to not care enough.

Anyways. It's also interesting if repetition can work just as effective. If this is what you need to fall in love, can you, say, do it again with a different person and fall in love again, just as much? Or will you then be reminded of how you fell in love with your previous partner (whom you fell in love with, by the very same process) and go back rerouting to that person? After all, romanticization is a powerful thing. If everything is as easy as it is though, I'll open a love clinic and prepare my troops of strangers to connect with you and make you fall in love all over again.

We love science, don't we all?