Film Screening: Homebound (2025)
Film Screening: Homebound (2025)
This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad. This blog is about the movie Homebound. for further information Click here.
This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad. This blog is about the movie Homebound. for further information Click here.
Part I: Pre-Screening Context & Adaptation
Source Material Analysis :
Homebound (2025), directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, is a Hindi film adapted from Basharat Peer’s 2020 New York Times essay titled “A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway.” The original essay is a piece of literary journalism that documents the real-life experiences of two migrant workers during the COVID-19 lockdown in India. Through a factual and empathetic narrative, Peer exposes the humanitarian crisis created by the sudden lockdown and the structural neglect of migrant labourers.
The film retains the emotional core of the essay but reworks the narrative through fiction to explore broader social and psychological themes. The real individuals from the essay—Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub—are fictionalised as Chandan and Shoaib in the film.
Comparison Between Real-Life Subjects and Fictional Protagonists :
In Basharat Peer’s essay, Amrit Kumar and Mohammad Saiyub are portrayed as migrant workers employed in the textile industry. Their identities are shaped by economic vulnerability, job insecurity, and social invisibility. The essay focuses on their struggle for survival during the lockdown, highlighting the state’s failure to protect migrant workers in times of crisis.
In contrast, the film Homebound presents Chandan and Shoaib as young men aspiring to become police constables. They are childhood friends from a rural background who believe that joining the police force will bring them respect, stability, and social dignity. This fictional shift transforms them from passive victims of circumstance into individuals with clear ambitions and aspirations.
Narrative Shift: Ambition and Institutional Dignity :
The change from migrant workers to police aspirants significantly alters the film’s thematic focus. In the original essay, ambition is limited to basic survival—finding food, transport, and a way back home. The tragedy lies in the collapse of even these minimal hopes due to systemic neglect.
In the film, ambition is redefined as institutional aspiration. Chandan and Shoaib dream of wearing the police uniform, which symbolises authority, legitimacy, and social recognition in Indian society. Their aspiration reflects a desire to move from the margins to the centre of the social and political system.
Ironically, the same institutions they wish to serve fail to protect them during the pandemic. This contradiction deepens the film’s critique of institutional dignity, showing that access to respect and citizenship is uneven and often denied to individuals from marginalised caste and religious backgrounds.
Conclusion :
While Basharat Peer’s essay presents a factual account of migrant suffering during the COVID-19 lockdown, Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound uses fiction to expand the story into a broader social critique. By transforming the protagonists into police aspirants, the film explores themes of ambition, dignity, friendship, and betrayal by institutions. This narrative shift allows the film to question whether social respect and belonging are truly accessible to all, even to those who aspire to serve the state.
Part II: Narrative Structure & Thematic Study :
3. The Politics of the “Uniform” :
In the first half of Homebound, the narrative closely follows Chandan and Shoaib as they prepare for the police entrance examination. This phase of the film is quiet, routine-driven, and filled with small hopes. The police uniform becomes more than a career goal—it emerges as a symbol of social mobility, dignity, and legitimacy.
For both protagonists, the uniform represents entry into the state’s authority structure. As young men from marginalised backgrounds, they believe that a government job will free them from caste- and religion-based prejudice. The uniform promises neutrality: once inside the institution, they assume their identities will no longer matter. This belief reflects a widespread faith in India’s meritocratic ideal, where hard work and discipline are supposed to guarantee success.
However, the film subtly deconstructs this belief. The staggering statistic—2.5 million applicants competing for only 3,500 seats—exposes the illusion of fairness within the system. The competition is so extreme that merit alone cannot ensure selection. The film shows how structural scarcity turns ambition into anxiety and hope into quiet desperation. By foregrounding these numbers, Homebound questions whether meritocracy truly offers equal opportunity or merely sustains the myth of fairness while excluding most aspirants.
4. Intersectionality: Caste and Religion :
Rather than showing loud acts of violence or discrimination, Homebound focuses on micro-aggressions—everyday humiliations that quietly reinforce social hierarchies. These moments are understated but deeply powerful.
Case A: Chandan and the ‘General’ Category :
One significant scene shows Chandan choosing to apply under the ‘General’ category instead of the reserved category available to him due to his caste background. This decision reveals the deep shame and stigma attached to caste identity. Chandan fears that using reservation will mark him as “less deserving” in the eyes of society.
The film does not judge this choice but presents it as a consequence of internalised oppression. Chandan’s decision highlights how caste discrimination operates not only externally but also psychologically. The desire to be seen as “equal” pushes him to deny the very identity that has shaped his social reality.
Case B: Shoaib and the Refused Water Bottle :
Another striking moment occurs in Shoaib’s workplace when a colleague quietly refuses to drink water from a bottle he offers. There is no verbal abuse, no confrontation—just an awkward pause and polite withdrawal. This moment exemplifies what can be called “quiet cruelty.”
The scene reflects religious othering, where Shoaib’s Muslim identity becomes a source of silent exclusion. The cruelty lies in its subtlety: the act is socially acceptable, deniable, and normalized. By focusing on such moments, the film shows how discrimination often functions through everyday gestures rather than open hostility.
5. The Pandemic as Narrative Device :
Critics have noted a clear tonal shift in the second half of Homebound, marked by the sudden arrival of the COVID-19 lockdown. At first glance, this shift may appear like a dramatic twist. However, the film carefully frames the pandemic not as a convenient plot device, but as an inevitable exposure of pre-existing “slow violence.”
Before the lockdown, Chandan and Shoaib already live within systems of scarcity, competition, and exclusion. The pandemic does not create their vulnerability—it intensifies and reveals it. What was previously invisible becomes unavoidable.
With the lockdown, the film transitions from a drama of ambition to a survival thriller. The focus shifts from exam preparation to physical endurance, from long-term dreams to immediate survival. Roads replace classrooms, hunger replaces hope, and movement becomes both necessary and dangerous.
This genre transformation underscores the film’s central argument: when crisis strikes, social hierarchies become brutally clear. Institutions collapse, and those already on the margins suffer the most. The pandemic acts as a narrative magnifier, exposing the fragility of dreams built on unequal foundations.
Conclusion :
Through its narrative structure, Homebound weaves together ambition, identity, and survival. The police uniform symbolizes hope, but also exposes the false promise of institutional fairness. Micro-aggressions reveal how caste and religion shape everyday life, while the pandemic strips away illusion and forces confrontation with reality. Together, these elements make Homebound not just a pandemic film, but a powerful social critique of meritocracy, dignity, and belonging in contemporary India.
Part III: Character & Performance Analysis :
6. Somatic Performance (Body Language): Chandan’s Internalized Trauma :
Vishal Jethwa’s performance as Chandan is marked by a deeply controlled and physical portrayal of internalized caste trauma. Reviewers have observed that his body seems to “shrink” in the presence of authority figures, and this somatic performance becomes a crucial storytelling tool.
In scenes involving officials, teachers, or recruiters, Chandan’s posture subtly collapses—his shoulders round forward, his gaze drops, and his voice lowers. These physical gestures communicate submission and self-surveillance, suggesting that Chandan has learned to make himself small in spaces of power. This is particularly visible in the scene where he is asked to state his full name. The hesitation before he answers, the tightening of his jaw, and the pause in breath reveal a fear that his caste identity will be exposed and judged.
This moment captures the psychological weight of the Dalit experience, where identity is not merely social but bodily ingrained. Jethwa’s performance shows how caste discrimination operates beyond explicit insult—it becomes a lived, embodied reality that shapes how one stands, speaks, and occupies space. The trauma is not loud; it is stored in the body.
7. The “Othered” Citizen: Shoaib’s Simmering Angst :
Ishaan Khatter’s portrayal of Shoaib is defined by restraint and contained emotional tension. Unlike overt expressions of anger or despair, Shoaib carries a simmering angst—a quiet frustration that rarely erupts but is constantly present.
Shoaib’s character arc is particularly significant. He initially rejects a job opportunity in Dubai, choosing instead to remain in India and pursue a government position. This decision reflects a complicated relationship with the idea of home. For Shoaib, home is not simply a place of comfort; it is a space where belonging must be continuously negotiated due to his religious identity.
Khatter expresses this conflict through controlled facial expressions and minimal dialogue. Shoaib often listens more than he speaks, absorbing insults and exclusions without confrontation. His longing for a government job reveals a desire for recognition and legitimacy within the nation-state. The uniform represents a hope that institutional belonging will override religious othering. However, his persistent anxiety suggests an awareness that acceptance may remain conditional.
8. Gendered Perspectives: Sudha Bharti as Counterpoint or Narrative Device :
Janhvi Kapoor’s character, Sudha Bharti, has generated mixed critical responses. Some critics argue that she functions mainly as a narrative device—a symbol rather than a fully developed individual. Indeed, Sudha is not given extensive screen time or narrative agency compared to the male protagonists.
However, her presence serves an important thematic purpose. Sudha represents educational empowerment and middle-class privilege, occupying a social position unavailable to Chandan and Shoaib. Her confidence, fluency in institutional spaces, and relative freedom of movement highlight the unequal access to opportunity within the same society.
Sudha’s interactions with the protagonists expose invisible hierarchies. While she empathizes with their struggles, she is not burdened by the same anxieties of caste or religion. This contrast underlines how gender, class, and education intersect to shape lived experiences differently.
Rather than viewing Sudha solely as underwritten, she can be understood as a necessary counterpoint a reminder that not all marginality is shared equally. Her character foregrounds the privilege of safety and aspiration that education provides, even as it exposes the limits of empathy across social divides.
Conclusion :
The performances in Homebound rely heavily on physical restraint, silence, and embodied emotion. Vishal Jethwa’s somatic portrayal of caste trauma, Ishaan Khatter’s depiction of minority anxiety, and Janhvi Kapoor’s role as a figure of relative privilege together create a layered character landscape. Through these performances, the film shifts its critique from external systems to internalized histories, showing how social inequality is carried not just in institutions, but in bodies, choices, and emotional rhythms.
Part IV: Cinematic Language :
9. Visual Aesthetics: The Aesthetic of Exhaustion :
Cinematographer Pratik Shah employs a distinct visual palette in Homebound that is often described as warm, grey, and dusty. This muted colour scheme reflects both the physical environment of the highway and the emotional state of the characters. The absence of bright or saturated colours creates a visual atmosphere of depletion, aligning the audience with the exhaustion experienced by the migrants.
During the highway migration sequences, the framing avoids wide, heroic shots. Instead, the camera remains close to the body. Frequent close-ups of feet blistered by heat, dust clinging to skin, and sweat running down faces force the viewer to confront the physical toll of movement. These fragmented shots deny any sense of progress or destination. The journey feels endless, repetitive, and punishing.
By focusing on bodily details rather than landscapes, the film constructs what can be called an “aesthetic of exhaustion.” The camera records labour and pain rather than spectacle. Feet become symbols of survival, dirt becomes a marker of invisibility, and sweat signifies the body’s struggle against collapse. This visual strategy resists romanticizing suffering and instead makes fatigue itself the dominant visual experience.
10. Soundscape: Silence, Minimalism, and Emotional Restraint :
The sound design of Homebound, shaped by the background score of Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor, relies heavily on silence and restraint. Rather than using continuous music to guide emotion, the film often allows ambient sounds—footsteps, breathing, wind, traffic noise—to dominate the auditory space.
Silence is used as a narrative tool. In moments of despair, fear, or humiliation, the absence of music intensifies emotional impact. Silence forces the audience to sit with discomfort, mirroring the characters’ isolation and vulnerability. When music does appear, it is sparse, slow, and almost imperceptible, functioning more as an emotional undercurrent than a dramatic cue.
This minimalist approach sharply contrasts with traditional Bollywood melodrama, where tragedy is often emphasized through loud background scores, emotional songs, and heightened performances. In Homebound, suffering is not announced; it unfolds quietly. The lack of musical excess avoids sentimentality and prevents emotional manipulation.
By privileging silence over spectacle, the film presents tragedy as ordinary, ongoing, and unresolved. This sonic realism aligns with the film’s broader aesthetic choices, reinforcing its commitment to portraying lived experience rather than dramatic exaggeration.
Conclusion :
Through restrained visuals and a minimalist soundscape, Homebound develops a cinematic language rooted in realism and empathy. Pratik Shah’s close framing and dusty palette create an aesthetic of physical depletion, while the controlled use of silence and music resists melodrama. Together, these elements immerse the viewer in the embodied reality of exhaustion, displacement, and quiet suffering, making the film’s social critique both intimate and deeply affecting.
Part V: Critical Discourse & Ethics (Post-Screening Seminar) :
11. The Censorship Debate: State Anxiety and Narrative Control :
One of the most debated aspects of Homebound has been the intervention of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which reportedly ordered multiple cuts before release. These included the muting of the word “gyan” in a specific context and the removal of a dialogue referencing “aloo gobhi”, a phrase interpreted by critics as carrying political and class-based undertones.
These cuts may appear minor on the surface, but their symbolic significance is substantial. The censored words are not obscene or violent; rather, they are embedded within everyday speech that gestures toward social hierarchy, ideological control, and lived inequality. The removal of such references reflects the state’s discomfort with films that expose social fissures related to caste, religion, and institutional hypocrisy.
Actor Ishaan Khatter publicly commented on what he described as “double standards” applied to socially conscious films. His statement highlights how mainstream commercial cinema is often allowed exaggerated violence, nationalism, or spectacle, while films that critically examine social reality face closer scrutiny. This disparity suggests that censorship is less about protecting audiences and more about managing narratives that challenge dominant ideological comfort zones.
In this sense, the censorship of Homebound reveals not just regulatory anxiety, but a broader fear of cinema’s ability to make structural injustice visible.
12. The Ethics of “True Story” Adaptations :
The ethical debate surrounding Homebound extends beyond censorship to questions of authorship, consent, and representation. Following the film’s release, journalist Puja Changoiwala reportedly raised concerns regarding plagiarism, while members of Amrit Kumar’s family stated that they were unaware of the film’s release and adaptation of events closely resembling his life.
These developments raise critical ethical questions about adapting stories of the marginalized. While filmmakers often justify such projects as acts of raising awareness, the absence of consent, credit, or compensation complicates this claim. Marginalized individuals are frequently positioned as subjects of empathy rather than participants in storytelling decisions that directly affect their lives.
The ethical responsibility of filmmakers, therefore, goes beyond intention. It includes acknowledging sources, ensuring transparency, and engaging respectfully with the communities represented. Awareness alone cannot ethically justify the exclusion of original subjects or creators, especially when their suffering becomes the foundation of artistic and commercial success.
Homebound thus occupies an uneasy space—between social responsibility and representational power—forcing audiences to question who truly benefits from “true story” cinema.
Commercial Viability vs. Art: The Fate of Serious Cinema :
Despite its international acclaim, including a strong reception at Cannes and recognition during the Oscars selection process, Homebound struggled at the domestic box office. Producer Karan Johar later remarked that films like Homebound are financially difficult to sustain, suggesting he may hesitate to produce similarly “unprofitable” projects in the future.
This contrast exposes a deep tension within the Indian film industry. On one hand, the film is celebrated globally for its realism, restraint, and political courage. On the other, it suffers from limited theatrical screens, weak distribution, and low visibility in the domestic market.
This gap points to changing patterns of consumption in post-pandemic India. Audiences increasingly associate cinema with escapism, spectacle, and digital convenience, while “serious cinema” is often relegated to festivals, streaming platforms, or academic discussion. Theatrical spaces, once sites of collective reflection, are now dominated by commercially safe formulas.
The case of Homebound suggests that while socially engaged films may win critical recognition, their survival within mainstream markets remains uncertain. This raises urgent questions about the future of politically conscious cinema in India—and whether cultural value can survive without commercial validation.
Conclusion :
Homebound invites not only emotional engagement but ethical and political reflection. The censorship debate reveals institutional unease with narratives of inequality; the adaptation controversy highlights the moral stakes of representing marginalized lives; and the film’s commercial failure exposes the fragile position of serious cinema in today’s market. Together, these debates position Homebound as a film that continues to provoke discussion long after the screen goes dark—precisely because it dares to confront uncomfortable truths.
PA RT VI: FINAL SYN THESIS :
“Dignity Is Not a Reward”: The Journey Home in Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound :
Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound (2025) presents dignity not as something to be earned through obedience, ambition, or institutional approval, but as a basic human right repeatedly denied by systemic apathy. Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 lockdown, the film follows two friends, Chandan and Shoaib, whose physical journey home mirrors a deeper and more tragic quest for social acceptance. The film suggests that in contemporary India, dignity is not withheld because individuals fail, but because social systems are designed to exclude certain bodies, identities, and lives.
The “journey home” in Homebound thus functions on two levels: as a literal migration during the lockdown and as a metaphor for the protagonists’ failed attempt to find belonging within the nation’s social and institutional fabric.
The Illusion of Dignity Through Ambition :
In the first half of the film, Chandan and Shoaib are not depicted as passive victims but as young men with ambition. Their preparation for the police entrance examination reflects a strong belief in institutional dignity. The police uniform symbolises respect, stability, and recognition—everything they lack due to caste and religious marginalisation.
For both protagonists, dignity appears conditional. They believe that once they “earn” the uniform, they will be treated as equals. This faith reflects a deeply ingrained belief in meritocracy: that discipline, hard work, and loyalty to the state will be rewarded with acceptance. However, the film subtly undermines this belief by foregrounding the brutal reality of competition—millions of applicants for a few thousand posts. The system promises dignity but structurally withholds it.
Ghaywan makes it clear that ambition itself becomes a burden. The protagonists internalise the idea that dignity must be deserved, not demanded. This internalisation prepares the ground for their eventual disillusionment.
Micro-Aggressions and Everyday Exclusion :
Before the lockdown begins, Homebound shows how dignity is eroded not through spectacular violence but through everyday humiliation. Chandan’s hesitation when asked his full name, and his decision to apply under the ‘General’ category instead of reservation, reveal how caste stigma operates psychologically. Dignity here is something Chandan feels he must hide his identity to access.
Similarly, Shoaib’s experience of religious othering—particularly in moments of quiet exclusion, such as a colleague refusing water—shows how dignity is denied through politeness rather than aggression. These micro-aggressions accumulate, reminding the viewer that exclusion is normalised and socially sanctioned.
Importantly, these scenes occur before the pandemic. The film thus establishes that the protagonists’ marginalisation is not caused by crisis; the crisis only makes it visible.
The Lockdown: Exposure of Systemic Apathy :
The sudden imposition of the COVID-19 lockdown marks a sharp tonal shift in the film. What begins as a drama of aspiration transforms into a survival narrative. However, the lockdown is not presented as a random catastrophe or a convenient plot twist. Instead, it functions as an exposure of systemic apathy.
As transport shuts down and institutions retreat, Chandan and Shoaib are left to fend for themselves. The same state they aspire to serve becomes unreachable. There is no protection, no communication, no acknowledgment of their existence. Their dignity collapses not because they break rules, but because the system abandons them entirely.
This abandonment reveals the film’s central argument: dignity cannot depend on institutional inclusion if institutions themselves are indifferent to human life. The lockdown strips away the illusion that citizenship guarantees care.
The Journey Home as Metaphor :
The physical journey home—walking along highways, sleeping in the open, enduring hunger and exhaustion—becomes a metaphor for the protagonists’ deeper journey toward acceptance. Home, traditionally associated with safety and belonging, becomes an uncertain destination.
Cinematically, the repeated focus on feet, sweat, dust, and breath reduces the human body to its most basic functions. Identity, ambition, and dreams dissolve into the struggle to survive. The “home” they move toward no longer represents hope but resignation.
This journey exposes a cruel irony: even when stripped of ambition and reduced to bare life, dignity remains inaccessible. The protagonists are not met with empathy but invisibility. Their suffering is witnessed by no one with power to intervene.
Embodied Trauma and the Failure of Belonging :
The performances reinforce this metaphorical reading. Vishal Jethwa’s physical “shrinking” before authority figures shows how exclusion is carried in the body. Ishaan Khatter’s restrained anger reflects a constant negotiation between hope and disillusionment. Together, their bodies register what the system refuses to acknowledge.
The journey home thus becomes a journey away from the illusion of belonging. The protagonists realise—slowly and painfully—that acceptance in the social fabric of India is conditional, fragile, and often unreachable for those marked by caste and religion.
Dignity as a Right, Not a Reward :
By the end of Homebound, the idea that dignity can be earned collapses completely. The film does not offer redemption through success, heroism, or sacrifice. Instead, it leaves the viewer with a stark recognition: dignity should not depend on productivity, obedience, or institutional approval.
Ghaywan’s film argues that when dignity is treated as a reward, it becomes a tool of control. Those who fail to conform—or who are structurally prevented from succeeding—are deemed undeserving. The tragedy of Homebound lies not only in loss of life or dreams, but in the refusal of society to recognise dignity as intrinsic.
Conclusion :
Homebound transforms the “journey home” into a powerful metaphor for social exclusion in contemporary India. The physical migration during the lockdown exposes a deeper truth: that systemic apathy denies dignity long before crisis strikes. Chandan and Shoaib’s failure is not personal—it is structural.
Through restrained storytelling, embodied performances, and minimalist cinematic language, Neeraj Ghaywan makes a profound ethical claim: dignity is not something to be earned after proving one’s worth. It is a basic human right. And when a society fails to protect that right, the journey home becomes not a return, but a reckoning.
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