By News18,Titas Chowdhury,Yatamanyu Narain

Copyright news18

Homebound Movie Review: In 2015, Neeraj Ghaywan marked his feature film debut with Masaan, a poignant and poetic film that portrayed how a boy from a lower caste cannot be a part of her Brahmin lover’s world, even in mourning. Geeli Pucchi in Ajeeb Daastaans saw an interesting intersectionality between two minority groups – the Dalits and the queer community. In 2023, Neeraj followed it up with a track in Made In Heaven that spoke about an inter-caste marriage and the trivialisation of Dalit identity in urban spaces.
And once again, his voice as a Dalit finds an echo, this time in Homebound. It makes for yet another wistful, complicated and entangled identities of the scheduled caste, the Muslims and the economically deprived. This is a bold film. It questions identity, human relationships, minority aspirations, politics, injustice. It’s tear-jerking, tragic, infuriating. It’s based on Basharat Peer’s compelling opinion piece in The New York Times titled Taking Amrit Home. And that, told through Neeraj’s lens hits you right in the gut.
Homebound revolves around Mapur boys Mohammad Shoaib Ali and Chandan Kumar. Having turned down a job opportunity in Dubai, Shoaib is preparing for a police recruitment exam. With an ailing father at home, he’s the only one who can save his family from utter destitution. Chandan, a Dalit, belongs to a family of labourers, also struck with acute penury. After Shoaib encourages him to sit for the exam, they take a train, hoping to change their future and destiny. At the station, they meet Sudha Bharti, a Dalit girl, who also is on a journey to becoming an officer.
However, things don’t go as planned. Shoaib is forced to take up a job as an office boy, where he’s constantly picked on by his Islamophobic senior. He refuses to drink water served by Shaoib. And when he finally finds himself landing a job in the sales team of the same company, the mockery gets unbearable. The senior’s hypocrisy also leads to ask him to submit ID proofs and police NOCs. And during an India-Pakistan match, things take a bitter turn and unable to tolerate any more disrespect, Shoaib resigns.
Life isn’t easy for Chandan either. When Sudha asks him his name, he hesitates. Afraid of how his identity can ruffle feathers, he chooses to just go by ‘Chandan Kumar’ omitting his ‘Valmiki’ surname. So petrified he is of consequences that he ticks the general category box, be it in his college admission form or his police recruitment form. Tired of waiting for the results of the exam, Chandan moves to Surat and starts working at a clothing mill where Shoaib also joins him.
But soon, Covid hits the nation. What follows is ostracisation and discrimination due to which they’re unable to go back home. In a scene, Shoaib gets mercilessly beaten up by cops for being a super-spreader (remember the Tablighi Jamat row?). And so, when they try escaping the second time, Chandan tells him to go by a Hindu name. Some of the scenes in Homebound are searing. When Chandan and Shoaib struggle to find work, they get so frustrated that their identities start driving a wedge between them. But that’s only temporary.
In a society deeply affected and wrecked by prejudices, these Juno’s swans rise and set an example without making a big deal about it. Their friendship and brotherhood stemming from deep love and perhaps even their common plight percolated through generations shine bright. And that will keep reminding you of that heart-wrenching photograph from The New York Times where Mohammad Saiyub carried Amrit Kumar on his back and another with Saiyub sitting next to a dying Amrit.
At 2 hour 2 minutes, Neeraj makes sure that you’re don’t look away from the screen. The narrative grips you so strongly and evokes such pathos that you truly become a part of this heart-rending world from which there’s no escape. The use of pauses, silences and the lack of background scores for the most part adds to the suppressed rage and melancholy. But don’t be mistaken. Here, there’s no contrived attempt to make you cry. It simply lays bare a fractured system that may officially reserve a quota for them but makes sure that they remain untouchables.
The film is packed with moments that will tug at your heart-strings, sometimes making you misty-eyed and sometimes sob. In a scene, Chandan’s mother who works at a primary school as a mid-day meal cook is affronted and expelled for polluting the food. Later, she’s seen quietly sitting in her room fixedly looking at a photograph of BR Ambedkar. And in a key scene towards the end when Shoaib has to look for Chandan’s documents inside an ambulance, he finds a picture of Ambedkar in his wallet.
But what remains the most memorable vignette is that of a lost Shoaib holding an ailing Chandan in his arms in the middle of nowhere. He begs, prays, gets angry, jokes and sweet talks him to wake up. And it’s heart-breaking. But regardless of the grimness, Neeraj infuses some beautiful moments of impish joy between the friends – Chandan sneaking into Shoaib’s humble home to devour on some biriyani on Eid or squabbling to secure a jar of his mother’s pickles from being gorged on by his colleagues at the mill.
Homebound’s beauty lies in Neeraj’s uninhibited voice and audacious storytelling. And this stirring narrative is further elevated by superlative performances by Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa and their natural camaraderie. Mellowed and subtle, they give it their all and emerge as two of the best performers of the year. The fiery eloquence in Vishal’s eyes and quiet wrath in Ishaan’s render a lot of substance and layer to the film’s most silent scenes. They render elements of playfulness first, fear sometimes and helplessness later to the narrative with conviction and effortlessness.
Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha is good but inconsistent in parts. Her intonations are spot-on at times but they miss the mark at others. And while her Sudha belongs to a well to do lower caste family, the urban girl in her sometimes comes to the fore, giving her and Chandan’s equation are a very inter-caste dynamic, when it’s not. But the film completely belongs to the boys who do all the heavy-lifting. And thankfully, this is no sanitised version of a story of oppression as Neeraj perfectly captures the messiness of destitution.
Apart from the politics, Homebound flies because of its portrayal of friendship and hope, which are both fragile and sustaining, and grief. Watch it for Ishaan and Vishal, but most importantly, Neeraj. Once again, he pins minority identities in ways that are lived, layered, political and deeply humane. And what’s refreshing is that here’s a filmmaker who doesn’t just reduce marginalised lives to suffering but shows their humour, love and dreams too. In his world, oppression isn’t always a violent flashpoint. And that makes Homebound cinematically rich and a must watch.