by Finnlay Dall
Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa, Janhvi Kapoor
Intro:
... the film’s message of education over qualification, while simple, is surprisingly effective.
At first, it seems rather ludicrous for Mommahed (Ishaan Khatter) and Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) – two best friends suffering poverty since birth under the horrendous caste system – to apply for the police force. The same cops that beat people like them every single day for even uttering their last names in public, or as last year’s Santosh explored, actively covers up child abuse and murder for the sake of optics, are not something two university-aged young men should be looking up to with starry eyes.
Yet, for this pair, left with a rough start, a hole over their heads and ailing relatives, the police force is not a moral pursuit, but simply a means to a fresh start. A new life with a shiny gold badge in place of a religious label. And as the year passes into another, and Chandan and Mohammed are left in a constant state of flux, one thing remains clear, through thick and thin, they’ll always remain friends.… Or so we’re left to believe, because when the inevitable reveal that only the coasting mommas’ boy Chandan will get to have his dream come true, and tryhard Mohammed is left in the dust, the cracks of Homebound begin to show.
While its politics and storytelling are by no means bad, or even inarticulate, the film is rather plain in how it presents India and its inequality. When international audiences were treated to a gut-wrenching Chinatown-esque neo noir about police brutality in Santosh, and a medical drama about a strong community of women living with, without and against men in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine is Light within months of each other, Homebound feels like going back to basics.
When a higher caste woman refuses to let Chandan’s mother touch or serve her child at school, or Chandan is told by a superintendent that a “pig can never become a lion”, it’s prescient sure, but it’s also as insightful or subtle as Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book were to American audiences. That said, the film’s message of education over qualification, while simple, is surprisingly effective.
Thanks to his relationship with sharp and proactive Sudha (Janhvi Kapoor), a middle class psychology student attending University, Chandan learns of the importance of education in creating opportunity. A job with the police may pay well in the short term, and open a few doors for people like him, but it doesn’t provide the long-term benefits of changing minds that learning offers – or the new minds that it helps influence for a greater future.
Conversely, Mohammed, who, thanks to a father needing a replacement knee, doesn’t have the financial cushion that Sudha has – or even the comfort of able-bodied and working parents like Chadan – to be able to afford the time or money an education would need. Even when his new sales team recognise his inherent talent for pushing product, without a degree, he has to sell behind their backs, even if proving his worth to the company would risk a criminal record. It’s this Catch-22 of education is power, but blocked by those in power, bigotry, and most importantly, money, around which Homebound moulds its most interesting ideas.
And almost as rudely as the pandemic interrupted many of our lives – and as jarring as this segue – the film disappointingly kicks our boys while they’re down, introducing the COVID-19 lockdown to the laundry list of Chandan and Mohammed’s melodramatic misadventures. Despite only being another hour, this second half, while still having the caste system rearing its ugly head, feels like a different film entirely. As Mohammed and Chandan’s work at a fabric mill is permanently shut down, and all the workers are given strict orders to quarantine despite food shortages, the pair have no other option but to return home by truck, and later on foot, to make the titular journey Homebound.
The two halves of the film don’t glue together. They may share the same friendship, the same caste system and the same India, but they’re about as close to each other as distant relatives. Quite simply, the film could have been just the story of two boys becoming disillusioned with attaining positions in the police force, or two factory workers forming a strong bond only to be tested by the coronavirus. It’s hard not to presume that the film wanted to lean towards the former and then while writing, the team were left to pick up the pieces in the real world lockdown.
