Homebound review – emotionally rich study of friends in rural India trying to get home in the pandemic

Having screened earlier this year at the Cannes film festival, this Indian drama has already drawn inevitable comparisons with All We Imagine As Light, an Indian film at Cannes the year before – but they are only glancingly similar. Payal Kapadia’s woozy, dreamy, femme-centric tale was primarily an urban-set story sprinkled with magical realist fairy dust. This is a much more four-square, on-the-nose, realist work about impoverished young men from a rural northern Indian town struggling to get ahead, and loosely based on a New York Times story published in 2020. But director Neeraj Ghaywan, whose 2015 debut Masaan was well-regarded, has a fairy godfather in Martin Scorsese no less, who apparently mentored Ghaywan through the script development and editing. Who knows who is responsible for which choices, but the end result is pretty damn good. It’s an emotionally rich study of friendship that ought to play as a bit syrupy given the story, but the musical score, usually very to the fore in more mainstream Indian films, has been smartly stripped down to let the excellent lead performers and strong cinematography bring the drama on their own. The protagonists are Chandan Kumar (Vishal Jethwa), who is a Dalit from what used to be called the “untouchable” caste, and his best friend Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Ishaan Khatter). Both come from dirt poor families and are facing few options to improve their lot unless they migrate to a city (like the women in All We Imagine As Light), or abroad. Indeed, Shoaib has just turned down a chance to work in Dubai. Chandan and Shoaib take the exam to qualify for the police academy on the same day, but bureaucracy being what it is they have nearly a year to wait for their results. In the meantime, Shoaib gets a gig doing menial work for a company that sells water purifiers and faces anti-Muslim prejudice when he tries to break into sales. Besotted with the feisty Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor) whom he has met at the exam, Chandan tries following her back to college, but his family’s economic needs compel him to seek employment a thousand kilometres away, at a textile factory where the hours are long and the work arduous. Shoaib ends up joining him there, and things are finally looking up for the friends when the pandemic hits. Another film-maker might have confined the story to just this last part, and focused on the young men’s many challenges as they try to make their way home to their families with curfews in place and limited transport options. But Homebound is deeply enriched by the time it spends with Chandan and Shoaib in their earlier lives, allowing us to become familiar with them as people, and the stakes to develop. While non-Indian viewers may be somewhat confused by some of the habits and customs, you can work out what’s important as it goes along; it’s admirable that the film isn’t dumbed down or sanitised for westerners. Bring tissues for a doozy of an ending that will have everyone bawling in the aisles. • Homebound is in UK and Irish cinemas from 26 September