India’s Oscar entry, ‘Homebound,’ is achingly empathetic

The Hindi-language Homebound follows two best friends in a country that’s decidedly unfriendly towards them. Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa) is a Dalit, a low-caste Hindu still subject to discrimination, despite the caste system being officially outlawed. Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter) is Muslim in an India seeing an alarming rise in cases of Islamophobia. As they await the results of a police recruitment exam, Chandan feels the shame of his name, and Shoaib is too prideful to accept his uncle’s offer of an alternative job. Chandan’s mother talks of her mother’s cracked heels; now the skin on hers is also splintering. All that the poor can inherit from their ancestors, Homebound seems to say, is their pain. In director Neeraj Ghaywan’s film, there are unrepaired holes in people’s roofs and a ceiling to their dreams. Chandan and Shoaib hope that securing a spot in the police force will not only fulfil their crucial monetary needs, but also accord them respect and dignity.

Even the community game of cricket has turned violently communal, camaraderie curdled by bigotry towards the two protagonists. In this melancholic film, each triumph is followed by bad luck that seems to stalk its characters relentlessly. Life is one battle after another. Some, like Chandan’s sister, who has been denied access to an education, never had the chance to begin. Others, like Chandan’s and Shoaib’s fathers, can’t afford to stop—poverty necessitates they keep working despite advanced age and poor health. The dialogue—by Ghaywan, Varun Grover and Shreedhar Dubey—occasionally comes across as blunt and heavy handed, but if the characters routinely explain their predicaments, it’s either because they’re processing a lifetime of unfairness to themselves, or venting to someone who they can count on to listen.

Water becomes a recurring motif, first when fellow traveller Sudha Bharti (Janhvi Kapoor) hands her bottle to Chandan when they first meet—a moment of connection between strangers that mirrors the ending of Ghaywan’s previous feature Masaan (2015)—then a false gesture of kindness when a clerk offers Chandan a glass upon seeing his mounting panic at the news of police recruitments being delayed, only to cruelly call him a “quota rat” upon sussing out that he’s from a lower caste. Finally, it conveys hostility and alienation when an office worker insists on refilling his own bottle, the subtext being that he doesn’t want the Muslim Shoaib (the new peon) touching it. A water filter offers opportunities for advancement when Shoaib is able to convince a customer to buy one, earning another boss’s respect. On the other hand, the stream the two friends sit by flows on even as they feel stuck in one place.

Homebound is also a deft study of friendship as Chandan and Shoaib trade barbs—incisively targeting each other’s pressure points as only longtime pals could—and instinctively understand each other’s silences. Ghaywan and co-writer Sumit Roy add wrenching touches to the ebb and flow of their relationship. The men are pictured on two literal different paths after one is selected for the police force and the other isn’t; their lives are about to diverge. Both end up working at the same textile factory anyway, dreams deferred, until the lockdown begins and their workplace halts operations indefinitely and they must walk along the same grueling 400-kilometer route back home together. Earlier in the film, Chandan had promised to care for Shoaib’s family once he joined the police force—an offer Shoaib had assumed an undercurrent of condescension in, his pride making him react with hostility. Now, the roles are reversed and Shoaib is the one caring for his friend.

Bolstered by stellar performances from Khatter and Jethwa, Homebound locates the intimacy in a global catastrophe—here are two friends who stick by each other, even when the rest of the world has let them down.