FILM REVIEW: HOMEBOUND

FILM REVIEW: HOMEBOUND By Suyash Pachauri

Owner: Publications

[GLOBAL BOLLYWOOD] & [DIRECTOR'S DAILY CLAPBOARD]

Introduction

Homebound, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, is a quietly devastating drama set in India amid the COVID‑19 pandemic, tracing the lives of two friends from marginalised social backgrounds trying to claim dignity and a path forward.  Inspired by Basharat Peer's New York Times essay “Taking Amrit Home,” the film fictionalises and expands upon the trajectory of migrant workers caught in lockdowns, layering caste, religion, friendship, and systemic injustice into its emotional core. Ghaywan is ably supported by Martin Scorsese as executive producer, who also provides feedback in editing stages. The film premiered at Cannes 2025 and was met with a standing ovation, signalling strong critical reception internationally. 

At its heart, Homebound is more than a disaster narrative it’s an exploration of how caste, religion, identity, and systemic neglect shape the lives of people even before a crisis hits. It asks: for those already marginalised, what happens when the world crumbles? The film does not offer easy answers, but it forces us to feel the fractures.

Screenplay & Script Sense

The screenplay co‑written by Ghaywan, Shreedhar Dubey, and Varun Grover is one of the film’s greatest strengths. It balances two timelines: the “before lockdown” life, with its hopes and tensions, and the “during/post‑lockdown” journey, with its ruptures and revelations. This interleaving allows the characters to be fully three‑dimensional; we care about them not merely because of what they endure, but because of who they are before crisis strikes.

The dialogue often feels lived-in and unsparing. (“If you speak truth, you become distant from everyone; if you lie, you become distant from yourself”) carry weight, anchoring the internal drama in the characters’ moral dilemmas. The writers resist melodrama; antagonists are rarely overt villains. The forces arrayed against the protagonists are often structural caste hierarchies, religious prejudice, bureaucratic indifference, and economic precocity. 

That said, the screenplay is not without its flaws. Some arcs feel underdeveloped: for instance, the romantic thread with Sudha (played by Janhvi Kapoor) remains peripheral, more symbolic than substantive. At times the pacing slackens, and certain transitions feel abrupt when moving from the “ordinary world” to the crisis mode. But overall, the script is remarkably assured for a film addressing such weighty themes.

One of the screenplay’s subtle moves: it uses silence and omission as much as speech. What is left unsaid often haunts the viewer the moments of prejudice, the choices deferred, the dignity compromised rather than spelling everything out. This restraint gives the film emotional power without sermonising.

Direction

Ghaywan demonstrates mature, confident direction. Coming a decade after his well‑lauded Masaan, he has clearly grown more ambitious in narrative scale, while retaining an ear for interiority. His approach is never theatrical; he trusts the camera, the silence, and the performances to carry the story.

One strength is how Ghaywan stages human relationships in constrained spaces home interiors, factory floors, crowded living quarters making structural inequality visible in the placing on stage itself. In quieter scenes a family dinner, an argument, a moment of despair Ghaywan slows down, letting time stretch so that the audience feels the weight of what is unsaid.

When the crisis intensifies, in the homeward migration sequences, Ghaywan allows chaos, scale, and fragmentation to seep in. He doesn’t try to control everything; instead, he lets the characters get swallowed, to mirror how their world unravels. That said, there are moments when balance is lost: certain dramatic set pieces feel overtly orchestrated, a little too clear in their symbolism. But these are largely forgivable in a film that aims for poetic truth over strict realism.

What is refreshing is Ghaywan’s refusal to make the film a “pandemic spectacle.” He doesn’t sensationalise suffering. Instead, he lets the human costs emerge gradually, intimately. The direction is compassionate, always keeping characters front and centre, never reducing them to object lessons.

Acting

One of the film’s major strengths lies in its performances especially of the two leads:

• Ishaan Khatter as Shoaib (Mohammed Shoaib Ali): This is perhaps one of his finest performances. He embodies quiet tension, frustration, and the pain of being perpetually othered. When confronted with subtle bigotry about his name, religion, or identity Khatter’s face often registers a thousand micro‑emotions: restraint, rage, sorrow. The internal conflict between wanting to belong and resisting assimilation is rendered convincingly. Critics have highlighted how he buries fury and lets small moments speak volumes. 

• Vishal Jethwa as Chandan Kumar: Jethwa gives a more measured, but equally affecting portrayal. Chandan carries the burden of caste, and he negotiates his identity differently sometimes by hiding, sometimes by assertion. Jethwa plays his restraint and occasional outbursts credibly. His chemistry with Khatter is one of the film’s emotional anchors. 

• Janhvi Kapoor as Sudha Bharti: Though her role is comparatively brief, she brings a luminous sincerity. Sudha acts as a kind of moral lodestar and a mirror she forces Chandan (and the audience) to confront harder questions. 

• Supporting cast: Chandan’s mother (Shalini Vatsa) is particularly noteworthy in quiet scenes she embodies generational sacrifice, sorrow, and the suppressed dignity of invisible labor. Other character actors and extras flesh out the world: factory workers, fellow migrants, bureaucrats, distant acquaintances all lending texture, rarely caricature.

In sum: the cast is deeply committed. There is no weak link in the core ensemble. Their performances carry the film you believe their world, you feel their pain, you carry their dilemmas.

Cinematography

Pratik Shah’s cinematography is elegant, often understated, but with moments of stark beauty. The early sections use natural light in domestic interiors, creating a sense of closeness and confinement. Shadows, narrow corridors, and dim interiors are often used to suggest constraint, both personal and structural.

When the narrative shifts toward migration, the visual palette opens up wide landscapes, long roads, overhead shots of masses on foot or atop trucks. The contrast between claustrophobic interiors and vast exteriors is used to great effect: those wide frames underscore the characters’ vulnerability and the scale of their struggle.

One sequence of walking migration is haunting Shah frames bodies, motion, dust, and emptiness in a way that becomes metaphorical. The camera doesn’t linger on spectacle but finds the human in the crowd.

That said, there is a minor unevenness: in some crowd sequences, clarity is lost. The chaos sometimes overwhelms, and occasionally the film’s intentions feel visually heavy-handed. But overall the cinematography is a worthy collaborator in the film’s emotional architecture.

It’s also worth noting the context: amid allegations about the cinematographer’s conduct, some will view the onscreen result with more scrutiny. But evaluating purely as craft, the visuals remain a strong, consistent asset.

Music & Background Score

One of the film’s more unconventional choices is its sparing use of music. The score by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor is unobtrusive it rarely intrudes, often whispers at the margins, allowing ambient sound, silence, and natural diegetic elements (machinery, traffic, footsteps, wind) to dominate. This restraint is in service of realism: the movie doesn’t “musicalise” suffering.

When the score does enter, it’s subtle strings, minor touches meant to underscore emotional turns, not dictate them. It works because the film is confident without needing orchestral signalling. Some critics call the background score “quiet weight” that complements the visuals rather than overshadowing them. 

This minimal approach is a strength, though it does reduce moments of catharsis there is no sweeping musical crescendo to cue tears; the film relies on silence and human connection to move you instead.

Editing

Nitin Baid’s editing is precise, rhythmically tuned to the shifts in tone. The film opens with a deliberate pace, letting scenes breathe, letting relationships and tensions develop slowly. As the crisis encroaches, the editing becomes sharper, more fragmented, intercutting timelines and perspectives, sometimes overlapping memory and present.

Transitions between “before” and “during” often use match cuts or sound bridges the editing stitches the temporal shifts into emotional continuity rather than jarring disruption. This gives the film a coherence even as the stakes escalate.

However, there are occasional moments when transitions feel abrupt or when a narrative jump would have benefited from more connective tissue. Some character arcs (especially in the periphery) feel under edited their entry or exit is too sudden. But these are minor in the larger scheme.

Baid’s editing helps ensure the film does not overstay its welcome: at around two hours, it feels lean, avoiding unnecessary linger, and guiding the audience through increasingly difficult terrain without fatigue.

Episode: Wise (Act / Segment) Breakdown

While Homebound is a continuous narrative rather than a segmented series, we can conceptualise its flow in three broad acts (or episodes) to understand its pacing and unfolding.

Act I: Aspirations and Inequity

We are introduced to Chandan and Shoaib in their village (Mapur). They prepare to take the police recruitment exam, seeing it as a ticket to dignity and escape from marginalisation. 

We see their family contexts: Chandan’s Dalit identity packs a daily burden; Shoaib’s Muslim identity shapes how he is perceived. Their friendship, banter, tensions, hopes are sketched out; secondary characters and everyday life are shown without gloss. Gradually, obstacles emerge: caste discrimination, bureaucratic delays, prejudice in petty work, familial obligations all of which test their resolve. The act ends with them beginning their work in a city (e.g. textile mills) as migration becomes their reality.

Act II: Struggle, Fracture, and Crisis Onset

In the second act, the struggle intensifies. Chandan and Shoaib live as migrant workers, grappling with harsh conditions, unfair wages, identity friction, and alienation. The film shows their attempts at small joys, bonds with fellow labourers, meals, rest, friendship moments of grace. But cracks emerge delays in results, misaligned expectations, conflict in identity, shame, and tensions in their relationship.

Then the pandemic and the national lockdown hit. The normal world collapses. Factories shut, transport stops, workers lose income, many begin walking hundreds of kilometres home. The chaos is not sudden but creeping the film allows tension to mount. The protagonists attempt to navigate this new terrain, reuniting and confronting their decisions so far.

Act III: Homeward...Loss, Sacrifice, Collapse

In the final act, the journey home becomes literal and metaphoric. The roads, trucks, walking paths, and deserted landscapes become stages of suffering. The two friends endure hunger, dehydration, crowd violence, fatigue, and heartbreak. Some companions collapse, some break. The film centres on how far they are willing to go physically, morally, emotionally for dignity, home, companionship.

The climax is not a triumphant return but a heartbreak: the cost of the journey reveals the fragility of their world, the limits of human endurance, and the cruel truth that for some, “homecoming” is not guaranteed. The film closes on ambiguity, on echoes of resilience and loss, leaving the viewer to sit with grief, guilt, and lingering questions.

Final Verdict

On the plus side:

• Deep, humane characters that avoid reductionism.

• A powerful script that balances structural critique with personal story.

• Subtle, emotionally intelligent direction that trusts viewers.

• Memory, silence, omission used as narrative tools.

• Outstanding performances from Khatter and Jethwa, and a strong supporting cast.

• Cinematography that moves between intimate and epic, reflecting internal and external worlds.

• A restrained score that respects realism.

• Tight editing that sustains tension without overreaching.

• A film that speaks to a time, but with resonance beyond it caste, discrimination, empathy, dignity.

On the minus side:

• Some peripheral arcs remain under-explored or abrupt.

• The romantic subplot with Sudha could have been more fleshed out.

• A few moments of visual or narrative symbolism feel heavy-handed.

• In the migration sequences, occasional loss of clarity in crowd chaos.

• The pacing in the middle act dips slightly (especially as the film transitions between aspiration and crisis)

One‑liner:

A quietly shattering portrait of two friends marginalised and tethered to their identities whose trek toward dignity becomes a pilgrimage through despair.

Homebound is not a comfortable see, but it’s a necessary one. It reminds us that despair is not exotic, and dignity is rarely given it must be claimed, sometimes at terrible cost. Ghaywan’s film stays with you, unsettles you, and reorients how you see those forced to walk toward home in a world that forgot them.