Coincidentally I was savouring the stunning neo-realism of Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound when its producer Karan Johar called to inform me that the film has been selected as India’s entry to the Oscars.
Not since Lagaan has a film from India been so worthy of getting the Oscar. Not since Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali have I watched a film so rapturously moving. Is Neeraj Ghaywan the Ray of hope of modern Indian cinema? In Masaan and now in Homebound, Ghaywan creates a world so authentic and yet so poetic!
The lyricism at the heart of Homebound wraps itself around our hearts. Only Ray did it in Pather Panchali so aptly. This feeling of watching an entire ethos of discrimination and humanism unfold through the characters is unparalleled by the cinema of the other greats of our times.
To be honest, I can’t at the moment think of a single modern filmmaker to parallel Ghaywan’s stupendous cinematic proclivity. His vision of a world where inequality induces an immense hope for Shining New India is infectiously tenable. And yet we all know the world is divided between the haves and have-nots. It is the have-nots whom Ghaywan embraces in his cinema.
Two friends, Chandan and Shoaib, one a Dalit, the other a Muslim, could have been just the formula that Manmohan Desai favoured. In Ghaywan’s vision the two outcastes as played by Vishal Jetha and Ishaan Khattar, embody the entire universe of injustices that the poor and the disempowered suffer on a daily basis.
There are moments and episodes in Homebound so sublime and illustrative of persecution and yet so stripped of self-pity, that the audience would find it hard to go with the flow. This is not a flow; it is a tidal wave of cinematic energy harnessed into one powerful story of two friends and their journey as unemployed aspirants, casualties of a prejudiced social order, on a journey that suddenly becomes telescoped into something far more intimate and tragic.
The performances by the two principal actors are impressive in no showy way. Khattar and Jetha play the two friends with the least fuss and fanfare. Khattar, especially, is a revelation, letting his eyes do the talking when the words fail: why is he not one of our most in-demand superstars? His monologue towards the end, at a point of indescribable tragedy, had me sobbing. I can’t remember the last time I was so moved in a movie theatre.
The rest of the cast, even in the minutest role, is beguilingly unrehearsed. I must make special mention of Shalini Vats as Chandan’s mother. Her breakdown sequence, which involves a pair of newly purchased chappals, ranks as a high emotional point in Indian cinema.
Oh, I could go on. But where are the words? I have seldom seen a film where not a single frame can be removed without seriously damaging the end product. This is it.
