#HomeboundMovie #homeboundfilm
HomeBound – Hindi – Netflix
Yes I know, am a little late, but better late than never. Homebound leaves me with mixed feelings, mostly good.
For starters, the raw reality shakes your very core. During Covid lockdown, news channels were flooding with videos of people walking thousands of kilometres to reach home.
Homebound projects this misery with such honesty, I couldn’t help thanking God, I feel so privileged. Huddled in an overcrowded truck which abandons you midway and you walk 400km home, how sad and terrible it could be.
Homebound tells you the story of Shoaib and Chandan, who struggle everyday, coming to terms with religious and caste bias. Chandan hesitates to claim he belongs to the SC Community and Shoaib is done listening to jibes about him preferring the neighbouring country over India. They move to Surat and are employed as labourers in a textile mill, until, Covid strikes.
The mill shuts down indefinitely and the two friends now have to fend for themselves, and they decide to return home….amidst all the chaos and restrictions.
What makes Homebound so good, is the strength of its performances. Ishaan Khattar, Vishal Jethwa, Jahnvi Kapoor, and everyone in the cast does a wonderful job.
Ishaan and Vishal pack a punch, how very realistic they look, speak and emote.
Now, for what I didn’t like much.
It’s just my opinion, but I felt, the bias part, be it religious, casteist or economic, was stretched and exaggerated a bit too much. The first half seemed a bit slow and repetitive with never ending references to our country’s problems.
I guess, that’s for Western Appeasement.
But come lockdown, and the movie shifts, to a calm and peaceful story of friendship and humanity. It makes you weep, it makes you smile, with it’s subtility and power.
Homebound is an intense movie, very honest and realistic. If only, the pace was quicker, if only the movie talked of lockdown more. But again, it’s just my opinion.
Definitely worth a watch. For Shoaib and Chandan.