A film premiering in the Un Certain Regard Section at one of the biggest film festivals in the world, Cannes, co-produced by Dharma, arguably the biggest production house in India, the second film by a director who gave Indian Cinema one of its finest films of the decade, ‘THE’ Martin Scorcesse hopping onto the project as the Executive Producer. As an Indian boy attending the festival for the first time, it is safe to say that I was rooting for the film even before I stepped into the Debussy theatre to watch it, and all the more reason why I despise the feeling I walked out with.
Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound is a tale revolving around two best friends from marginalised communities, one muslim and the other a lower caste Hindu boy, looking for dignity and financial stability as they are confronted with the realities of their identities in today’s Indian society. The premise makes a grand promise of confronting very real problems in contemporary India, but the story lacks exactly what Ghaywan’s Masaan had in abundance: nuance. As the story progresses, we see an archaic representation of systematic issues of the marginalised, the same old India-Pakistan matches, and upper caste families refusing to eat the food made by the lower caste woman. The film manages to do and make you feel what Instagram stories of a privileged neo-liberal kid would as well, it talks in an echo chamber consisting of people who already know these things. Though the film tries to be observational, it falls for cliches in its observation, and crosses the thin line between empathy and sympathy.
The point homebound gets is for trying; it does everything right on paper, which is why, I assume, I had white people all around me in tears, leading to a long 9-minute standing ovation. I could understand why it would affect a white audience, more or less unaware of the systematic issues of our subcontinent. The film does try to confront the problems faced by marginalised communities in India from all fronts, it tries to look at how it affects intersectional characters, it tries to find a common thread between different oppressed communities, it tries and tries and tries, but sadly, in the most conventional ways one could think of. Let me put it this way for you, if you were to ask an Indian with any semblance of class consciousness for examples on the systematic issues in our country, their first thoughts would be what makes for the whole of Homebound.
The script, written by Neeraj Ghaywan himself, is weak and undercooked. The article from Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer that inspired the script paints a much more vivid and grounded picture of the realities that the film only tries to imagine. Varun Grover, the writer of Masaan, and Shridhar Dubey wrote the dialogues for the film. The dialogues, though realistic, feel deflated due to a weak treatment of the story. The writing hits all the conventional notes of an emotionally charged film, but it ends up becoming nothing more than that: a conventional film. I reiterate my problem with the film that exists on each level of the filmmaking process; it is delivered in the most typical form with hackneyed imagery to register anything beyond the surface. It is human to be emotional to see someone die; it would take much more than that to have a character’s death haunt you beyond the dark theatre, and considering the weight of its subject matter, it had all the potential to have us introspect our realities beyond it.
The performances in the film were good, Vishal Jethwa as Chandan Kumar and Ishaan Khatter as Mohammed Shoaib Ali are convincing in their roles, both actors nail the emotional tones of the film. Having said that, the question remains: Is good the best we have? For a role of two boys from an extremely remote village in Uttar Pradesh, were these the best actors we had? They convince us, but again, it reflects the glossy approach of mainstream Bollywood towards stories of marginalised communities, from India’s last year entry to oscar ‘Lost Ladies’ to Homebound, as someone who belongs to similar part of the country, I was constantly aware that they were ‘trying’ to speak in the accent of the community they represented. It begs a question for casting that addresses the raging debate over nepotism in the industry: When will we start casting for the role rather than fitting the caste into the role? Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha Bharti, on the other hand, did an excellent job; though her screentime is limited, she handles the performance with care and ease. Other actors in supporting roles give a mature performance, though the banality of the story itself takes away from their performances.
At best, Homebound will affect its audience that already agrees with it emotionally; at its worst, that is all it is capable of. The story had immense potential, and that might be all the more reason why I am disillusioned with its outcome. A film that has a thread running through casteism, communal bigotry, and the grossly mishandled pandemic in India could have said much more if it empathized instead of sympathizing with its subject matter. It is all the more disheartening because Ghaywan’s last film, Masaan, did exactly that with such finesse and brilliance. On a brighter note, the film opens up new avenues for South-Asian filmmakers and artists. This might just create space for big production houses to slowly venture beyond the failing conventions of Bollywood.