Neeraj Ghaywan on ‘Homebound': ‘If I don't tell my stories, who will?'

Mint

5 days ago

Neeraj Ghaywan returned to Cannes 10 years after his debut feature film Masaan premiered there. Homebound, his sophomore feature, which premiered to heartfelt applause and tears at the festival on 21 May, follows two young men in rural India—Muhammed Shoaib Ali, played by Ishaan Khatter, and Chandan Kumar, played by Vishal Jethwa—determined to escape a life marked with bigotry and poverty.
As a Muslim, Shoaib faces constant discrimination and as a Dalit, Chandan's place in the social hierarchy is all but pre-determined. The two best friends grew up down the road from each other and we meet them at an age where their concerns about providing for their families and transcending their circumstances have taken centre stage.
Shoaib's father wants him to take up a menial job in Dubai, where he won't be looked at askance on the basis of his religion, and Chandan's family is willing to go to great lengths to ensure he can pursue a career or education outside their village. But to the two friends, a police uniform represents a shortcut to the respect they've always been denied. So along with two million other young hopefuls, they take the qualifying state exam for a constable position. But when police recruitment is put on hold, they must scramble to figure out Plan B.
Sudha, a young Dalit woman (played by Janhvi Kapoor) whom Chandan meets by happenstance and slowly begins to fall in love with, has decided that higher education is the only pathway that will allow her to truly rise up in the world. Fissures caused by her and Chandan's different strategies for upward mobility soon begin to appear in their relationship, and Shoaib, too, starts to pull away from Chandan when they disagree on the best path forward for each of them.
What makes Homebound layered and complex is how these three characters, all from marginalised backgrounds, have their own moral compasses, world views, and pain thresholds. There's no monolithic view or solution when it comes to deep-rooted systemic problems and we see it in the way the three challenge each other's ideas.
Shoaib and Chandan are wonderful foils for each other—the former's righteous anger offset by the latter's endearing tenderness. They push and challenge each other, but when it really counts they're also a shoulder for the other to cry on. Their friendship is the beating heart of the film, played with a lived-in camaraderie and mutual affection by Khatter and Jethwa.
'One of my inspirations is a quote by Rilke—'Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. No feeling is final'," says Ghaywan during an interview at Cannes. 'I wanted to show the beauty, not just the terror, because it's a patronising gaze to only see people as victims. In their world, there's also joy. There's also friendship. There's also family, and inter-family love. Because from an urban gaze, it's more about victimhood, which is a narrative that I'm honestly very tired of seeing. And I don't feel seen. And if I don't tell my stories, who will?"
Eventually Shoaib and Chandan end up working at a textile factory hundreds of kilometres away from home, and the series of choices that led them there set them on a path to eventual tragedy. Ghaywan walks a fine balance, allowing the quiet devastation of the final act (inspired by real events) to unfold while never teetering into melodrama.
'I wanted it to be cinema vérité," he explains, citing Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers as influences. He also had the good fortune of having cinema legend Martin Scorsese in his corner. One of Homebound's producers, Melita Toscan du Plantier, is friends with Scorsese (who was already a fan of Ghaywan's work in Masaan) and shared the script with him. The next thing Ghaywan knew, the Oscar-winner was emailing him notes and watching cuts, and even meeting with him over Zoom to offer feedback. 'It's still not sunk in," he says, of Scorsese's generosity of time and expertise on this film.
Together with his collaborators, what Ghaywan has created is a work of deep empathy, one that seeks to bring about understanding rather than to vilify or alienate. 'I didn't come from a place of hatred for the other side. Because I'll become one of them, right? I want to be empathetic towards them… because people are victims of societal pressure, of misinformation, so instead of pointing daggers, maybe we can hold their hands and tell them, 'let's watch it together and see what happens.'"
Pahull Bains is a freelance film critic and culture writer.
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