En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove)

A routine lifetime, sturdy crystalline productive disciplined rigour, shocks and surges and synergies refreshed and reconstituted, dis/ingenuous gravitas, im/pertinent shallows, crises, crucibles, cubicles, companionship, curmudgeony coca, grumpy old bear, shattered inveterate disrepair, friendly yet fiendish, stubborn yet understanding, a bleeding heart with no tolerance for stupidity, a prognostic paradigm, tired of living alone.

An unwilling multicaring master of quotidian ceremonies seeks to end it all after having grown none too fond of his lonely predicament.

Yet every suicide attempt fails as curious neighbours inquisitively interrupt him.

In search of aid.

Will the attempts stop as Ove (Rolf Lassgård) accepts his necessary role or is the loss of his wife simply too much to ignore?

To unburden.

I should have just called him an aging romantic.

Old school know-how, postmodernly applicable.

Comedy, tragedy, dismissals and outrage fluidly blend and contradict as Hannes Holm's En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove) proves that life's worth living.

From driving lessons to guidance counselling to children's stories to a complimentary spade, the film ironically employs a grouchy weathered patriarch to communalize arabs, gay people, eccentrics, regular joes, and the happy-go-lucky.

Captivatingly so.

There are moments where people air their grievances only to be briskly reminded of the greatness they have undeniably achieved.

According to Ove's incisive summaries.

But the film isn't preachy, such dialogue is expertly woven in to avoid seeming too emotional, to counterintuitively use implausibility to capture something realistic.

I don't know much about what's happening in Sweden these days, but I can claim that En man som heter Ove internationally and often hilariously synthesizes the left and the right while pretending like it'd rather be stretched out on a couch watching reruns of Cheers, or the Swedish equivalent of the celebrated American sitcom.

Sort of like hot chocolate.

Points to make, style to consider.

Ove may not want to do anything ever, but whenever he attempts something, he engages full-throttle.

Occasionally expressing road rage.

Dabba (The Lunchbox)

The hearty provision of delicious nourishment slowly melts Saajan's (Irrfan Khan) frozen exterior in Ritesh Batra's Dabba (The Lunchbox), Ila (Nimrat Kaur) enraptured as someone finally takes note, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) benefitting from the frosty fallout.

As depicted in the film, Indian lunch delivery is a complicated procedure, providing employment for many, their services applauded by Harvard.

Lunch, potentially homemade, is cooked, picked-up, dropped-off at a central location, then distributed to hungry workers, as the day's labour approaches its extended period of rest.

In Ila's case, the lunch she prepares for her husband is delivered to the wrong person.

Curmudgeony Saajan revels in his good fortune even if his bouncy inquisitive replacement (he's retiring) Shaikh continuously annoys him with his enthusiastic go-getting.

Ila discovers that her husband isn't receiving his lunch and begins sending Saajan letters, the two slowly developing a fledgling romance thereafter, Saajan gently mending her broken heart.

Hesitantly yet tenderly unreeling, Dabba quotidianly explores the thoughts of two modest upstanding hard working subjects, their difficulties with the im/moral dimension of their love lettering, or the joys/hardships associated with transgressing cultural codes.

The film required something else to hold it together, and Shaikh's presence, youth contending with age, adds flavourful ingredients to its recipe, rounding out its amorous intentions with related thoughts concerning integrity, friendship, and saturated job markets.

Ila's relationship with her Auntie (Bharati Achrekar) achieves similar ends albeit from a domestic standpoint.

The lotus.

Unfinished Song

Routine.

Rock solid routine.

Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.

Who sings in a choir.

But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).

And yes, this guy's a prick.

A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.

Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.

Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.

Bit of a tearjerker.