For India바카라s marginalized, it바카라s a losing game. Every seeming climb gets undone by yet another structural prejudice ingrained in the collective psyche. Premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Neeraj Ghaywan바카라s Homebound underlines this in steady progression, while also mixing in occasional scatterings of hope. The two friends at the film바카라s center know well everything that is being pitted against their chances of triumph. One is Muslim, the other Dalit. But Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) don바카라t abandon their pursuits so much as they twist changing stakes to best bids of survival. Before those come into play, they have to battle shame and self-erasure as fallout of their identities. Even as Shoaib takes up a temporary job, he buys a police officer바카라s cap and keeps it close as a reminder of his goal. Homebound is abundantly bleak바카라misery shoving into focus just when things seem promising. Yet there are also slivers of rapturous teasing, like sneaking into a friend바카라s house for biryani or jousting over a beloved pickle brought from home to the city.
Both Shoaib and Chandan sit for the police service exams but recruitments are put on hold for a year, results indefinitely delayed. They believe the police uniform is what will lift them beyond constant anxieties bound in faith and caste. For everything they do and aspire for, identity바카라social and religious바카라stands in between. Both come from farming families. Chandan holds back his surname to pass for the general category in application forms. He baulks at slipping his full name to Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor)바카라also sitting for the exam바카라with whom he forges an instant connection. When she shares her lower-caste surname, there바카라s a tinge of relief. Nitin Baid바카라s edit crisply struts forth. Later, a police superintendent viciously declares how 바카라quota rats바카라 eat into everything, while the rest like him are left with just crumbs. On one hand, Chandan is caught between hiding and owning up to his identity in public spaces; on the other, Shoaib바카라s vocal, assertive attitude often seems to burst through at Islamophobic slurs. How long can one endure and let humiliations in the name of 바카라joking바카라 pass? To protest risks losing everything, having to start all over again. Cricket matches with friends and office ecosystems only need a trigger to target and suspect him. Instead of being offered a chance to prove mettle, all he바카라s asked is to supply endless records바카라his parents바카라 IDs, his unimpeachable past.
Though Ghaywan바카라s screenplay doesn바카라t always hold subtlety in near sight, its emphatic, incisive intersectional understanding cleaves clear paths to the shattered heart of India바카라s political atmosphere. In an increasingly right-wing Hindu fundamentalist nation, those slipping through the cracks of hardened, preferred identity keep lurching between mere dreaming and absolute devastation. Caste, class, gender, religion바카라they are crucially delineated as enmeshed, yet Ghaywan is wise and probing enough to distinguish fault lines running through each structure. Nothing escapes the crushing weight of defined identity. At one point, Chandan regretfully remarks him being nothing but a 바카라checkbox on a form바카라. The Chandan-Sudha track is as much about their growing affection as it is about ruptures borne out of differences between either바카라s view of empowerment.
Should he take the constable job, he바카라d be stuck at that his entire life. Nothing will change. A degree can widen his options. With her firm Ambedkarite principles, she exhorts that he looks at the bigger picture. He reiterates that he just can바카라t wait any longer. His house바카라s roof is leaking. Leaping at a government job makes more sense than hanging on for more years in getting a degree. At college, he바카라s almost lost in a sea of English-language classes. Simultaneously, he fishes for meanings in a dictionary.
Scenes like this decisive conversation between Chandan and Sudha바카라simple in design, thornily revealing in argument바카라imbue Homebound with acute nuance. Within a particular identity subset, there will be difference and debate in how they see their struggle. For every Chandan who바카라s just struggling to do what바카라ll benefit his family in the immediate, there바카라s a Sudha, passionate and determined to take the collective struggle forward. If there바카라s not a seat at the table, she바카라ll bring her own chair.
A deep, bristling sense of the generational haunts Homebound. Chandan urges his mother (an indelibly wrenching Shalini Vatsa) to put ointments on her prickled feet. She refuses, reminding him of his grandmother바카라s feet that were nothing less than sickles. 바카라Feet is all the inheritance I바카라ve got,바카라 she says. Chandan is the first in his family to get even the choice of a college education, denied to his sister Vaishali (Harshika Parmar), who desperately wanted it, more so than him.
Homebound바카라s impassioned brilliance is in how it threads the social and familial바카라the larger canvas of a community바카라s struggle for self-determination enfolding myriad intimate dramas. Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor바카라s score doesn바카라t push emotions so much as it pleats them into the narrative fabric, segueing inconspicuously into a moment바카라s swell. The tiniest of situations render a vivid dramatic impact, like migrants dropped from a truck ride in the middle of the night and nowhere, under COVID fears. Khatter and Jethwa buoy the film, etching an easy friendship that sings, frosts over, thaws and smashes hearts. They instantly capture our attention. Though the film바카라s final stretches lend a fervid, gutting showcase for the actors, they are equally tremendous in flickering snatches of few seconds. Watch out for a scene when giddy joy slowly shades to anguished realization on Khatter바카라s face바카라a quiet sadness filling his eyes. Pratik Shah바카라s camera bathes the characters in lovingly soft light, a gleam of tenderness. The few spare times the camera swoops high, unforgettable top shots blaze into the soul. One shows the friends straggling through parched landscape, the other of hordes of migrant workers silently walking at night lit by yellow street-light. There바카라s such gentleness and dignity with which Ghaywan and Shah depict these lives. Homebound is imperative viewing바카라as heart-tugging, discomfiting as enraging.
Homebound premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival 2025.
